Amnesty International Report 1996 - Belize

Two people were sentenced to death and eight others remained on death row. No executions were carried out. Two people were sentenced to death. Adolf Harris was sentenced to death for murder in February, and later had his appeal to the Belize Court of Appeal dismissed. Anthony Bowen was sentenced to death for murder in August, despite his claim that he was under the age of 18 at the time of the offence, which took place in December 1993. An appeal to the Court of Appeal was still pending at the end of the year. Eight other people remained on death row. They included Alfred Codrington, Lindsberth Logan, Ellis Taibo and Salvadorian citizen Nicolás Antonio Guevara (see Amnesty International Report 1995). Early in the year, all four were granted leave to appeal by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London, the final court of appeal for Belize. They were still awaiting their full hearings at the end of the year. Marco Tulio Ibañez also remained on death row. His appeal to the Court of Appeal had been dismissed in March 1994 but a petition to the JCPC was still pending. Wilfred Lauriano (previously given as Orellano), who was sentenced to death for murder in December 1994 (see Amnesty International Report 1995), had both his appeal to the Court of Appeal and his petition to the JCPC dismissed. A constitutional motion was then filed and was heard in the Supreme Court in Belize in August. In his judgment the Chief Justice cited a 1972 proclamation which stated that, in death penalty cases, if appeals to the JCPC were not made within a certain time frame, any order made by the JCPC would not be valid. Lawyers questioned the validity of the proclamation. There was concern that the Belize authorities might interpret the judgment as rendering invalid several existing stays of execution, placing these people in imminent danger of execution. On 22 August death warrants were read to Pasqual Bull and Herman Mejia for their executions to take place on 25 August. Both, sentenced to death for murder late in 1994 (see Amnesty International Report 1995), had had their appeals to the Court of Appeal dismissed in February 1995 but had not yet appealed to the JCPC. The prisoners were reportedly not permitted to contact their families or lawyers before the scheduled hangings and relatives of the prisoners only heard of the imminent executions by chance. When lawyers in London heard of the authorities' intention to carry out the executions, the day before they were to take place, they immediately filed a petition to the JCPC and an eleventh-hour stay of execution was granted pending the outcome of these petitions. News of the stay reportedly only reached the prison 30 minutes before the executions were scheduled. At the end of the year both men's petitions to the JCPC were still pending. In August Amnesty International appealed to the authorities on behalf of Herman Mejia and Pasqual Bull, expressing concern about the attempted resumption of executions and calling for Belize to abolish the death penalty.