20101211
africanews

Liberia is to carry out reform in its jury system with the aim of tackling corruption in the judiciary. Justice minister Christiana Tah said the move became necessary following complaints about judges who take bribes to decide cases.

“We are concerned about the jury system and some of the questions that the public has are not unfounded. We have heard of lot instances where jurors received bribes and voted in favour of the person, usually the defendant,” Tah told VOA.

She said the government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf remained committed to making Liberia's judicial system as corruption-free as possible.

“We are concerned with jury tampering and all kinds of things. So, what we decided to do, I spoke with one of the justices a couple of weeks ago and we decided to have a retreat on jury reform to see how we can reform the jury law.

We’ve been talking about this a long time and I think it’s time that we take action so that, when the legislature comes back in January, we will have the opportunity to submit a new jury law to them, something that will really transform the system, maybe not necessarily doing away with the jury system, but at least revising it in such a way that will reduce the likelihood of corruption.”

Speaking on a judge’s decision to acquit former Information Minister Lawrence Bropleh, who had been accused by the government of stealing more than $200,000 while in office, Christiana Tah said the government has already filed an appeal of the ruling to the Supreme Court.

“I can say quite candidly that I was very shocked when I was told that the case was dismissed. I sent for the prosecutors to explain to me what was going on and whether it was true that they had not shown up in court, and they told me they had shown up in court.”