BELIZE CITY, Wed. June 17, 2020– Last Friday, Acting Chief Justice Michelle Arana handed down a ruling in the civil claim brought by the former president of the Bar Association of Belize against former Chief Justice, Kenneth Benjamin, and the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC).

In the oral ruling that was issued virtually, the Acting Chief Justice ruled that the constitutional rights of the then president of the Bar Association, Cheryl-Lynn Vidal, S.C., were violated when she was barred from attending meetings of the JLSC.

Chief Justice Benjamin decided that Vidal, who is also the Director of Public Prosecutions, should not have been in attendance at JLSC meetings by virtue of the fact that she was a public officer as well as the president of the Bar at the time, which the Chief Justice deemed a conflict of interest.

So for two years, Vidal was excluded from attending the meetings of the JLSC.

In response to the question, where do things go from here, since DPP Vidal is no longer the Bar Association’s president, the Bar’s attorney, Andrew Marshalleck, S.C., told News5, “Well, the Bar has a new president, yes. Mrs. Vidal is no longer the president of the Bar, but where we were, if you can recall, was that in the claim we sought a declaration that Mrs. Vidal had been unlawfully, unconstitutionally, excluded from the Judicial and Legal Services Commission and that as a consequence of her exclusion from participating in the proceedings of the commission, the decisions of the commission made in the interim period were unconstitutional and void.…”

The Acting Chief Justice, however, did not grant the relief that the Bar was seeking through its civil claim.

Marshalleck explained, “…she has refused the Bar Association any of the relief claimed, including the declaration that Mrs. Vidal was unlawfully excluded from the meetings and in particular, including the decision that the consequences of her having been unlawfully excluded from the commission was to invalidate the decisions of the commission.”

Marshalleck explained that the court’s decision not to grant the relief sought, was based on the reasoning that the Bar had taken too long to file its complaint, and chaos would result if all the decisions of the JLSC were to be invalidated.

Marshalleck explained the implication of the judgment and the court’s failure to provide relief in view of the violation of constitutional right: “…If it is, as the judge has found, that the decisions were valid, notwithstanding the exclusion of the president of the Bar from the proceedings before the commission, then I don’t see any risk of any chaos,” he said.

Feature photo: Attorney Andrew Marshalleck