KEY POINTS:
Courtroom 12, the High Court at Auckland. Wednesday, 3pm.
Cheng. Tang. Cheng. Tang. Cheng. Tang.
This the sound of justice being done. Serious, complicated justice.
A police officer is in the witness box of a methamphetamine trial, giving monotone evidence from a monotonous transcript of intercepted telephone calls between men called Cheng and Tang.
It is a major: 91 charges of supplying, conspiring to sell, selling and manufacturing the Class A drug.
Courtroom 12, the size of a school gym, is swamped with hundreds of esselete folders. Headphones are strewn about for listening to the bugged evidence. The sound of paper being turned comes crystal-clear over the hi-tech microphones.
There's a judge, jury, the seven accused and a grand total of 14 lawyers. Then there's the court staff, Chinese translators, security guards and police officers.
This began eight weeks ago, the same day as Chris Kahui's murder trial got under way in a nearby courtroom. Kahui's been a free man for a week now - this trial still has at least two weeks to go.
The police witness carries on.
Cheng. Tang. Cheng. Tang.
They are referring to page 1808 of the transcript.
COURTROOM 12 is booked solid for the next two years.
It is the biggest courtroom of its kind, where RSA triple-killer William Bell was convicted and rape-accused former assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards was acquitted.
There are more major methamphetamine trials waiting. A big commercial case. They need its room, its facilities.
If they can't be heard here, they can't be heard anywhere.
This is the top-end of the court system's bottle neck.
As cases filter down in degrees of seriousness and complexity through the country's District Courts, they face the same problem of no room at the courtroom.
At the High Court, everyone knows the reason: methamphetamine.
The government reclassified it as a Class A drug in 2003 so offences could be punishable with a life sentence - which can only be done by a High Court judge.
Methamphetamine cases have since ballooned nationwide.
There are more criminal trials, more cases overall, more of a backlog and a longer wait to get to trial.
There was even a rare "stay of proceedings" issued in the High Court at Auckland last year, when seven people walked free on methamphetamine charges because the case had dragged on for five years.
Judges have been frustrated for some time, wanting the law changed so many of the methamphetamine cases can be transferred down to the district court.
The Criminal Procedures Bill now before Parliament could have passed this into law some time ago but it is stalled in a political stalemate because the Labour government cannot get a majority to pass it.
Chief High Court Judge Justice Tony Randerson went public with the frustration this week, telling the Weekend Herald "judges are doing their duty but there is a question how much longer they can".
Justice Randerson said because criminal trials had to be dealt with in a timely manner under the Bill of Rights Act, they were taking priority over civil and commercial cases.
This, said Justice Randerson, should "definitely" be a concern to commercial and business interests.
It also meant cases of great importance to the individuals involved - involving negligence, breach of contract or leaky homes - were being put on the backburner.
"There is rightly concern about this," said Justice Randerson. "It is not in the public interest that cases of any kind are delayed."
Justice Randerson said the 32 High Court judges were having difficulty keeping up with the caseload and "there are are limits to how long they can keep functioning at the top level".
"We might be dealing with the supply of a point bag of methamphetamine worth $100 that might result in a sentence of home detention. It is not right that a High Court judge should be dealing with cases of that kind, but as the law stands, we simply have no choice."
Justice Randerson agreed that is was rare for the judiciary to comment publicly on legislation before Parliament, "but it is appropriate for heads of bench from time to time express their concerns on matters of the public interest."
The frustration of judges is even more palpable behind the scenes, with the Weekend Herald obtaining a summary of the problem from one of New Zealand's most senior judges.
That judge signalled morale was low, with his colleagues feeling methamphetamine trials, unless they involved serious offending, were "a complete waste of their valuable time", "lengthy, routine and very boring". "High Court judges, who are appointed because of their legal expertise, would much rather be dealing with difficult legal issues such as those which arise in major commercial cases."
But the Criminal Procedures Bill is getting little traction in Parliament.
A legal "omnibus" which contains other measures such as exceptions to double jeopardy and majority verdicts, has stalled since it was introduced almost four years ago. It faces opposition from the National Party and because of the loss of Taito Phillip Field's vote, the Labour Government does not have the numbers to pass it into law.
It is not the authority to transfer a methamphetamine case to the district court which is politically controversial, it is the move to abolish pre-trial depositions hearings where it is currently decided if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed to trial. Under the bill, these would become the exception rather than the rule, with the decision instead made on the documents.
National opposes this, with MP Chester Borrows filing a Supplementary Order Paper saying depositions hearings remove complexities, result in guilty pleas or withdrawal of charges and therefore fewer trials.
The Government will not push the bill through without a depositions clause - which it says will speed up the court process.
Political stalemate. The paralysis of the courtroom and Parliament are running parallel.
The anonymous judge described the Government's position as "unfortunate", saying it "had been caught halfway over the fence, as it were".
The judge reserved criticism for the National Party, which "is making public complaint about the delays in the courts but risks looking hypocritical if, without any good reason, it is seen to be opposing abolishing depositions hearings without any good reason".
The judge also criticised defence lawyers, who support depositions hearings, "influenced perhaps by the fees which will be lost if the reform proceeds".
The judiciary's call to move methamphetamine is supported at the bar.
Auckland District Law Society president Keith Berman said clients with a "reasonably high" prospect of recovering a million dollars in legal action, would sometimes settle for as little as $300,000 if they knew a hearing was two years away.
But he agrees with Criminal Bar Association president Graeme Newell that resources must be put into the District Court to take the load - itself facing a "crisis" according to comments this month from Judge Jan Marie Doogue.
Newell says the problem began when the Government made methamphetamine Class A: "they simply pandered to public opinions rather than thinking about the high court which has finite resources.
"They unleashed this beast, then all of sudden five years down the track, its whoops, we've got a P bottleneck."
Courts Minister Rick Barker said the solution to the "beast" lay in the Criminal Procedures Bill.
"Here is one thing we can do as Parliament to improve the court system in the interest of the victims without compromising at all on the rights of the defence, and yet they are not doing it."
Justice Randerson said he had no comment to make on the anonymous judge's remarks about the National Party.
Nor did he want to make any comment on why the bill had stalled.
"I am simply commenting on the views of the judiciary that we would like to see this bill passed.
"How the Government achieves this majority is a matter for the Government."
P AND THE COURTS
Methamphetamine was made a Class A drug in 2003, making a life sentence possible and meaning virtually all cases have to be heard in the High Court.
The total number of cases filed in the High Court each year has steadily increased since, rising from 347 in 2004 to 409 in 2007
The "backlog" of cases has gone up with it, with hundreds more cases now waiting to be heard.
Criminal jury trials have particularly increased, from 136 when the law change was made to 236 today, an increase of 73 per cent in five years.
More than half of these are methamphetamine trials.
The impact is more marked in the High Court at Auckland, where methamphetamine trials currently make up 99 of the 168 trials in the backlog - some 60 per cent of the total.
The average time to get to trial has gone up from 185 days in 2004 to 228 days when it was last recorded in 2006 - and it is expected to have ballooned even further.
Criminal trials have to take precedence over civil and commercial cases, because they must be dealt with in a timely way under the Bill of Rights Act.
The "end of the queue" for civil cases is now in the middle of next year.
And despite every effort to improve efficiencies, waiting times are actually extending.
There are 32 High Court judges nationwide - only three more since when the methamphetamine became Class A. Two of those make up Auckland's roster of 19.
There are no more courtrooms at the High Court at Auckland.
SOURCE: Justice Tony Randerson, Ministry of Justice.
