Using Video Conferencing For Judicial Backlog

In many developing countries, judicial hearings are at district head quarters or at capital cities. People from remote places suffer because of the delay in judicial hearing. Each hearing is accompanied with the problem of reaching courts which are at far of locations, they wait years together, just to get a legal hearing, time passes away waiting, some times in jails, many times in controversies creating lot of delay in taking right decision. Courts cannot be blamed for the situation as the cases get piled up to a situation where resolving all the issues quickly is impossible.

Large number of pending cases are of minor motor vehicle, stealing, insult, slapping etc. It is a known fact that, there is a shortage of judicial staff. It is to panic that people's faith is decreasing drastically towards the sluggish legal proceedings, each hearing is mere test of patience, not a solution for resolving their disputes. A new ad-hoc and innovative method of clearing up the accumulated cases at the courts is need.

Setting up trial and mobile courts at accessible places and connecting to senior judges from the district or state level courts through video conferencing will solve the problem of lack of judges.

Arranging a public hearing where each side will present their evidence to support their version of facts and legal arguments to support them. The Judges can be connected to the hearings to resolve the issues staying at the court or at their residence. Through the technology like video conferencing the Judge can connect to next village one after the other as their is no traveling and he/she can give his verdict to many cases at an amazing speed in turn contributes to the clearing off the accumulated cases.

Many of the court cases can be resolved by trial method as:

1. In a criminal case, a prosecutor, in a trial method may offer the defendant to accept guilt to avoid more severe sentence if their is a chance of proving to be guilty in a real court. This is called plea bargaining.

2. In a civil case, most of the people want to solve the problem by compromise, as there is a fear of losing to the other side, as winning in trial court, moving further to a real court may not be supported. This is called 'Stipulation'. Connecting to a senior lawyer on line through video conferencing to act as a Judge for the compromise on legal terms, will work out in resolving minor disputes and reducing the strain of stepping the court steps.

Aiming at resolving the disputes, it can be done through discussing the issues in presence of a lawyer who can clarify legal issues involved and help to understand the constrains they are going to face, along with the kind of decisions they need to make, after the legal suit starts at a real court. A settlement doesn't really mean any one party is right or wrong, its a mere adjustments which both parties agree to make to live in harmony. A settlement need not resolve the whole problem, but both parties partially resolve the issue to a certain extent and both parties explicitly understand the legal issues interwoven with the dispute.

Finally to sum up, on line conferencing using Video conferencing solves considerable number of cases through the same staff. When implemented in courts it works wonders in bringing down the mountain of cases to a manageable size. Dealing simple cases through online conferencing helps the tribal and remote villages immensely.