Haiti’s judiciary, which had been functioning poorly for years due to corruption, underfunding, and political interference, reached a state of near-complete paralysis in 2021 as insecurity, the assassination of the president, and the gang takeover of large portions of Port-au-Prince made normal judicial operations essentially impossible. Courts that had been operating at reduced capacity closed entirely in some areas; judges and prosecutors who faced threats fled or went into hiding.
The practical consequences of judicial paralysis were severe and immediate. Criminal prosecutions that had been underway were suspended. Pretrial detainees whose cases were pending remained in prison indefinitely with no prospect of their cases being heard. Civil disputes that might have been resolved through the courts festered without any mechanism for resolution. The rule of law, always fragile in Haiti, had effectively ceased to function in most of the country.
The assassination investigation itself illustrated the dysfunction. Despite international attention and evidence gathered by multiple jurisdictions, the Haitian judicial process for investigating and prosecuting those responsible for Moïse’s killing proceeded at a glacial pace, hampered by threats to investigators, the flight of suspects, political interference, and the fundamental incapacity of a system that had never been adequately resourced.
Judicial reform advocates who had been working for years to strengthen Haitian courts found their efforts undermined by conditions that made any reform implementation impossible. They called for specific security guarantees for judicial personnel as a precondition for any meaningful restoration of judicial function, and for international support for a justice sector that had been left to collapse without adequate attention or resources.