The Chief Justice is considering how courts could run socially-distanced jury trials later this year.
Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
Jury trials were postponed in the wake of the Covid-19 response, delaying almost 60 trial sitting weeks in the High Court alone.
In a letter to the legal profession, Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann said jury trials would resume at the start of August at the earliest.
She said it was expected that physical distancing would still be required at that time, and courts were planning how to conduct jury trials under such restrictions.
Judge-alone trials, which were also suspended during the lockdown, will resume in the District Court on Monday.
Courts have been operating at a limited - and increasingly virtual - capacity as an essential service during each Covid-19 alert level.
Winkelmann said court work had scaled up during alert level 3 and most hearings had at least one participant join using remote technology.
Courts will not shift to alert level 2 until Monday 18 May, to give participants time to make the arrangements necessary for the change.
The Chief Justice said the number of people allowed into court buildings would continue to be limited to avoid overcrowding.
Entry would continue to be limited to those required for court business. Members of the public, including participant supporters, would requiring prior permission from a judge to enter a court for a hearing.
Courts would be following Ministry of Health guidelines with 1m physical distancing, screening, orderly queueing and contact tracing at courthouse entrances.
Court participants would also be allowed to wear in court any personal protective equipment, including face masks, if they wished to do so.
Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu said the courts' ability to take on additional work on top of priority proceedings might be significantly constrained by the need to observe pandemic safety measures.
He said protocols in the District Court, the country's largest jurisdiction, allowed for regional variation to address localised issues, with his approval.
Justice Winkelmann said courts would continue to scale up the workload to mitigate the delays seen in tens of thousands of cases across the country.
"We do not know how long restrictions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the courts and society at large," she said.
"But we do know that pre-existing backlogs, and those which have arisen during the shutdown, are of tremendous importance to people affected by delayed hearings."
