Court Frees Men in 2010 Drug Plane Case After 14 Years

This next news item received very little attention, and had gone under the radar, despite the major publicity it received almost 15 years ago.  Last Thursday, the High Court freed six men, including four cops who were charged with landing a drug plane in southern Belize back in 2010.  After being on remand for over a decade, the men filed a claim of a breach of their constitutional rights, indicating that their right to a trial had well surpassed a reasonable time.  The claim was filed against the Attorney General’s Office on July 14, on behalf of the men, Harold Usher and Victor Logan, Lawrence Humes, Jacinto Roches, Renel Grant, and Nelson Middleton.  In a sixty-two-page judgment, Justice Derrick Sylvestre sided with the claimants, stating that their rights had indeed been violated, despite the Crown’s argument that a date had been set for the matter later this year.  In his judgment, Justice Sylvestre wrote quote, “The adage ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’, has plagued the Criminal and other Courts for decades. This court is cognizant that crime has been declared, by the CCJ Academy of Law, as a Public Health Emergency, and that there are intolerable delays in the administration of Criminal Justice,” end of quote.  He ordered that all future criminal proceedings for their indictment be stayed indefinitely.  It is important to note that a stay of proceedings is not a dismissal or a verdict of “not guilty.” The charges are not dropped and can potentially be reactivated at a later date, although an indefinite stay often has the effect of ending the case. The entire matter stemmed from an incident in Bladen Village in the Toledo District, on November 13, 2010.  On this date, a twin-engine Super King Air Beechcraft airplane landed on the Southern Highway where law enforcement officers seized over two tons of cocaine from the aircraft. The incident led to the arrest and indictment of the six men on the charge of facilitating the landing of the drug plane. The men were later acquitted in 2014, but the decision was appealed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and a re-trial was ordered.  The retrial never got off the ground, and the men are now free after spending fourteen years and eight months on remand at the Belize Central Prison.//////