Rhett Fuller’s extradition case adjourned to January
Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay, attorney for Rhett Fuller who is wanted by the U.S. Government for a murder almost twenty years ago, today presented additional arguments in the Appeals Court on a request for the extradition of Fuller. The appeal took six long years to come to court and yesterday when it got underway the case arguments by the attorney general’s office were still not ready. In initial arguments, the Court had asked whether there was any law that gave the then Foreign Minister the power to request the Magistrate to issue a warrant for the arrest of anyone wanted for extradition. And that’s what Courtenay worked overtime on. Today in court he said there was very little success to that end.
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Rhett Fuller
“We found one case, however, from Saint Kitts and Nevis which, as you heard me arguing, suggests that the court has power to change the law as it currently reads and to give the power to the Minister. I was pointing out to the court that the reasons given by the law lords of the Privy Council as to why they came to that conclusion seem, on the face of it, to be unimpressive and unattractive and lacking in a legal basis. So their lordships didn’t take a decision on that. They said that we need to come back in January because we all need time to consider this very important point. It doesn’t seem to me so far, from the research that I have found that there’s anything that would authorise the Minister to grant the order that he did.”
Marion Ali
“As the law exists right now, who has the authority to give that order?”
Eamon Courtenay
“It is our submission that there is no law in Belize that gives anybody that power. The law as we see in Bahamas was amended to do it; the law in other countries have all been amended to give the power to somebody specifically. I think it’s an oversight in our case. It is our submission that this is an entire abuse of the process of this court. The facts of this case are that Mr. Fuller is accused of supposedly being part of something that happened in 1990. Nothing happened in court until 1998. Now that is an abuse to wait eight years before you start a case. We are going to argue that it should have been stopped, the United Case government should have been told immediately that that is an abuse and we are asking the Court of Appeal to find it. So we believe that the matter will be dismissed, that the request for Mr. Fuller’s extradition will be denied and I will ask the court, if they find that, to make an order that there be no new request because it will then be nearly twenty years.”
The appeal is being heard before President of that Court, Justice Elliott Mottley and Justices Dennis Morrison and Boyd Carey. Fuller will have to wait longer to hear his fate in this extradition case as Courtenay has until the end of November to file additional arguments in writing. The Attorney General’s Ministry, represented in court by Attorney Priscilla Banner, has until the end of January 2009 to do the same. The appeal will come up again next year in January when the court convenes.
