Belize’s Broken Justice System in Desperate Need of Reform and Repair
For months, prosecutors and other officers of the court have been complaining of a severe lack of adequate security at the courts. What took place this morning, shines a spotlight on an issue that has been raised before, one that previously resulted in a sickout by Crown Counsels attached to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It’s a broken system that is in need of urgent repair. In our second story, we learn from the sister of the deceased, whose accused killer was in court to learn his fate, why the system is failing the people.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
The escape of a pair of prisoners this morning, including accused murderer Hildebrandt Codd, has brought the issue of security at the High Court into sharp focus. The family of Densmore Bowman has been working diligently with the Belize Police Department, as well as the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, to convict his alleged killer. What transpired in court today, was a colossal failure that exposed the vulnerability of the justice system.
Tiffany Cadle
Tiffany Cadle, Sister of Deceased
“I just hope that this situation is a wakeup call to the justice system, to those who are up there, for them to see what’s happening down here. From the time my brother went missing, until the time we found him, if it was not for the work that I had to put in to find and to get this individual to court, we would have no justice, none. We wouldn’t even have found that body. Nothing would have happened and now for me, my family to have gone through all this, we did all this work and now to get to this stage and the gentleman just disappears, just escaped.”
As it stands, the High Court is manned by private security officers, none of whom carry a firearm to protect persons accessing the courts. It’s a complaint from prosecutors that resulted in a mass sickout at the start of the High Court session on September eighteenth. The issue recently reared its ugly head once again last week, despite the Attorney General’s Ministry passing it off as misinformation. In court today, attorney Alifah Elrington, head of the Prosecution Branch, described the challenges of transporting inmates from one court to another. With the lower courts presently situated on Coney Drive, ferrying prisoners to Regent Street or to the Charles Bartlett Hyde Building is a logistical nightmare as the department has only one vehicle to do so. Likewise, with renovation taking place at the former Supreme Court Building that was badly damaged by Hurricane Lisa last year, the holding cell that was on the lower flat is no longer being used; therefore, prisoners are temporarily housed in the jury rooms. When we inquired why inmates are uncuffed while inside the courtroom. News Five was informed that it is a court-wide policy across the country that all inmates must be freed of their handcuffs upon entering the courtroom.
Tiffany Cadle
“I am part of this system, I am part of this justice system and people always ask me, “Ms. Cadle, do you practice criminal law?” And I’ve said, I don’t practice criminal law, I don’t want to practice criminal law. The system is a mess and it needs to be fixed. It has to be fixed. We need to fix it, I mean, this is not right. Everything about it is not right. Everything, it’s just, it’s unbelievable. I can’t tell you how much this has cost us a lot of pain and I guess there is no end to our pain because it doesn’t hurt the ones who are in the position to make these decisions. It doesn’t hurt them. They are not the ones who are feeling down here.”
In another strange twist that happened earlier in the case against Hildebrandt Codd, Tiffany Cadle explains how close they’ve come to a conviction, despite the law enforcement and justice systems almost failing them.
Tiffany Cadle
“I did everything, I provided all this information to the police. When we went to trial, those videos were still not in there. If it wasn’t for the witness and myself, we would not have been able to get a conviction because that was the basis of how we were probably able to convince the judge that he is the one that murdered my brother. Yes, the verdict has not been handed down but we were almost ninety percent sure we got our conviction because there was no way, he, himself took the stand. Hildebrandt Codd, himself, took the stand and confirmed every single thing that we had said to the court that he was with Densmore Bowman.”
According to Cadle, an attempt was made to abduct the witness who was set to take the stand against Codd during the murder trial.
Tiffany Cadle
“The night before the witness was supposed to take the stand, the family kidnapped her to prevent her from testifying. She called me at two o’clock in the morning asking me for help because they took her from her house and they were going to transport her to PG so she wasn’t able to come and testify. We ended up contacting the police at two or three o’clock in the morning, myself and my partner, we contacted the police. The police went and picked the young lady all the way up in San Jose. This is the witness that we had asked them to protect for us. Picked her up all the way in San Jose, bring her, transported her, police transported her to Crooked Tree junction. We then went to Crooked Tree junction, picked the witness up and I had to put the witness in protection. I had to pay for that from my money. There was no protection. We asked for it.”
Isani Cayetano for News Five.
