Former Police Officers Sent Back to Prison in Hilbert Sotz Killing Case

Former police constables Hallet King and Leonard Nunez are heading back to prison for the 2015 death of 18-year-old Hilbert Sotz.  The Court of Appeal threw out the nine-month sentences the men received in 2019 and replaced them with prison terms of ten years and two months. The court found that the original sentences were far too lenient and did not reflect the seriousness of what happened.  Sotz was detained in Caye Caulker on June 8, 2015, in connection with several burglaries. While being held at the police station, he was beaten by King and Nunez inside an interrogation room. He later died from head injuries.  A jury found both officers guilty of manslaughter by unlawful harm in July 2019. At sentencing, however, the trial judge treated the case as manslaughter by negligence and gave each man nine months. Since they had already spent ten months on remand, they were released for time served.  The Director of Public Prosecutions, Cheryl-Lynn Vidal, immediately challenged those sentences. King and Nunez also appealed their convictions and were cleared by an earlier Court of Appeal panel. That decision was later overturned by the Caribbean Court of Justice, which restored the convictions in January and sent the sentencing matter back to the Court of Appeal.  In the ruling, the court started with a sentence of fifteen years and increased it to eighteen because the killing involved police officers abusing their authority over a person in their custody.  The sentence was then reduced to fifteen years because both men had clean records. Another four years was taken off because of delays caused by the state. After crediting the ten months already spent on remand, the final sentence came down to ten years and two months.  King and Nunez must surrender at the Queen Street Police Station in Belize City by ten o’clock on the morning of July 29. They will then be taken to the Belize Central Prison to begin serving their sentences.