Defence lawyer Mark Pettingill has backed the top prosecutor?s call to end time-wasting preliminary hearings.

The Acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Kulandra Ratneser said the hearings, which are held at the request of defence lawyers for Magistrates to decide if there is sufficient evidence to go to trial, were unnecessary and had been abolished in many countries.

This got surprising backing from Mr. Pettingill who said: ?If you go back and see how many of those cases are thrown out they are a very small percentage, largely to issues regarding identification.?

Mr. Pettingill agreed with the DPP, who said pre-trial conferences with a judge could easily handle such things.

?I concur with everything he is saying, the important thing is it?s a huge resource to have someone like the current DPP who is a senior counsel experienced in other jurisdictions.

?We need to listen to what he has to say,? said Mr. Pettingill. ?It?s nothing short of ignorance if we don?t.

?The backlog is increasing for any number of reasons.?

Preliminary hearings often delayed a trial for six to eight months, said Mr. Ratneser in Monday?s

Mr. Pettingill said: ?Defence counsels may say people should be entitled to their long-form preliminary enquiry but there is no question that some defence counsels have abused that.

?The fact of the matter is they will be crying there is a delay in justice and their client has been locked up for too long.

?But you are delaying because you are waiting for a long form (preliminary inquiry).?

He said the DPP had the power to override a claim for a preliminary inquiry and send it straight to Supreme Court with a voluntary bill of indictment.

?If I was the DPP I would just voluntarily bill them. You have a lot of power there, but perhaps he doesn?t want to overplay that.

?It would be nicer to just not have the opportunity for the preliminary inquiry.?

Mr. Pettingill also said there was an urgent need for a proper recording and transcribing system of trials.

?We hold ourselves up a country to be the Rolls Royce of international business but as far as the criminal court system goes we have a beat-up Volkswagen.

?We have one of the most affluent countries in the world yet we have a court system where we wear wigs and gowns ? which I am all for ? but just because you are parading around in 18th Century period dress doesn?t mean your court system should stay in it as well.

?The only thing missing is the judge having a quill pen with an ink pot.

?You have to have a certain flow to a trial. Judges aren?t taking short hand. It?s very difficult for them.?

He said the Live Note system, which had been successfully tested by new Chief Justice Richard Ground when he was last in Bermuda in a long running fraud trial around six years ago, should be the model.

A stenographer takes down speeches, which were edited, and put on laptops used by everyone in court.

?That kind of reporting system saves time in the court room, probably by as much as half. It may cut down on the appeal process because you are able to review the record more quickly.

?This is how bad it is, we did a quite a long murder case back in June (Archibald). We are still waiting for the record in order to properly lodge an appeal.?

Mr. Pettingill has long called for video conferencing in Police interview rooms to protect Police being wrongly accused of falsifying statements and assaulting witnesses and to protect witnesses on the odd occasion they were attacked.

?This would cut down on time in the court room challenging statements. All you have to do is go to the tape.?

Legal aid fees could be saved and trials speeded up said Mr. Pettingill.

But he said Police had yet to fully use the audio taping system. ?They have it in regard to certain high profile fraud investigations.

?It?s ridiculous, we need to have it across the board, the same issues arise whether it?s a fraud case, a murder case or a breaking and entering.?

He estimated videotaping might cost $100,000 to install in every interview room.

?You might save that on one case.?

He also said it was time Bermuda threw out its Criminal Code, which dated back to the early 1900s, and had anachronistic offences such as shaving silver off coins and ship wrecking removed from the books.

?We could basically do with throwing it in the bin.?

The easy way would be to take a model from somewhere which had done this such as the British Virgins Islands in 1993, said Mr. Pettingill.

?When people see they are being charged according to the criminal code of 1900-odd they think they are being tried under old law.

?It might still be good law but the layman sees it as running back to colonialism. He wonders if he is being treated fairly.?