The annual ceremony and church service marking the opening of the legal year took place in the capital on Wednesday.

Members of the legal fraternity, led by Chief Justice, Sir Ian Winder and Attorney General, Sen. Hon. Ryan Pinder, attended a service at Christ Church Cathedral then proceeded to the Margaritaville Hotel where the Chief Justice, the Attorney General and Bar Association President, Khalil Parker addressed the body.

While speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the event the Attorney General spoke to the government’s use of plea agreements to bring conclusion to certain court cases. He said, “we made a strategic decision that is order to be able to facilitate the backlog in the courts that we had a responsibility as the DPP and the government as well. Certainly, the courts have a responsibility, the Judiciary has a responsibility but we have a responsibility as prosecutors. And we thought certainly, plea deals help facilitate being able to get through the process and being able to extinguish matters that are on the calendar. Do we think its the right thing to do? We absolutely do.”

The Attorney General also explained what factored are considered when a plea is negotiated. He said, “you have to judge the actual matter that you’re undertaking, the quality of the evidence, what it looks like with respect to a prosecution and make that evaluation. And in that evaluation it may be better to plea that out and still get a conviction but for lesser time than the original charge might have been than to not get anything at all.”

During his presentation, the Chief Justice revealed that the nation’s first sentencing guidelines were released to the Bar Association for consultation. He said, “the value of sentencing guidelines is that they promote consistency, fairness and transparency in the criminal justice system by providing a structured framework for judges to determine appropriate sentences for criminal offenses.”

There has been public criticism of recent sentences handed down especially for sexual offense. Director of Public Prosecutions, Cordell Frazier said, “where you see there is a lighter sentence then you must ask yourself what were the personal circumstance of that particular defendant now convict. And so the public has to be educated on what are the sentencing guidelines, whether the person has the antecedence or not.”