BELIZE CITY, Tues. Dec. 12, 2017–Belize’s Chief Justice, Kenneth Benjamin, came under the scrutiny of the Belize Bar Association in September, when the Bar passed a resolution calling on him to deliver delayed judgments for 32 cases that he has heard but on which he has not yet issued a ruling. The Bar had threatened to file for his removal from office for misconduct.
Shortly after the Bar voted on its resolution, Prime Minister Dean Barrow had announced that two retired judges from the Caribbean would be hired to assist the Chief Justice in writing the delayed judgments.
That was a mistake on the part of the Prime Minister, and something that is impractical because, as legal sources pointed out to Amandala, judges cannot write judgments for cases that they have not heard. Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte had confirmed that indeed no judges would be hired to assist the Chief Justice with his backlog.
On Friday, Prime Minister Barrow told reporters following the House of Representatives meeting, that the Chief Justice was not receptive to the idea of judges being hired to assist him, and was resolved to write his judgments by himself.
The old maxim that “justice delayed is justice denied,” has once more come to the forefront as it relates to the delayed judgments of Chief Justice Benjamin, some of which date as far back as 2010 and will not be completed by the end of the legal year next month, when the Supreme Court has its ceremonial opening to mark the beginning of the 2018 legal year.
News5’s Isani Cayetano recently asked Attorney General, Michael Peyrefitte, about the Chief Justice’s delayed judgments, which he indicated he would have completed by December 15.
Peyrefitte explained that it would have been too difficult for him to have completed all 32 judgments within the limited timeframe.
“But a couple weeks ago, he told me that he had full intention of completing at least twenty-two of them. Yesterday he told me that he did complete twenty-two of the judgments, and so he is still ten short; but out of the thirty-two, we can say that he has concluded a significant number of those judgments,” Peyrefitte said.
Peyrefitte added, “So I am sure the Bar Association will take a position on it, but I think that the Chief Justice has now fully appreciated, I mean he always did appreciate the impact of not delivering the judgments, but he has fully appreciated the extreme seriousness of it. So from now on we hope that he would do more to ensure that that type of backlog does not build up anymore, and he has every confidence of that going forward.”
“…Come next year he will have to find the time in addition to the duties that he has on a day-to-day basis. He just has to find the time to produce them, and it’s not that he doesn’t want to produce them. He wants to produce them, so let’s see what happens in the New Year,” remarked Attorney General Peyrefitte.