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The eminent Boyd Carey, ex-Court of Appeal judge, dies at 85 in Florida

FeaturesThe eminent Boyd Carey, ex-Court of Appeal judge, dies at 85 in Florida

BELIZE CITY, Mon. May 11, 2015–News coming out of Jamaica is that retired Court of Appeal justice, Boyd Carey, died today in Florida, USA, at the age of 85.

Carey had retired from the bench in March 2010, after serving in Belize for 10 years, but he was reappointed as temporary justice of the Belize Court of Appeal for the June 2011 session to help clear a backlog of cases.

Carey served the judiciary in his home country, Jamaica, The Bahamas and Belize for more than three decades. Carey had retired from the Court of Appeal in Bahamas in December 1999, and the following year he commenced his tenure in Belize.

Boyd Humbert Gloucester Carey was born in Jamaica in January 1930. He studied at Whitfield Elementary School and Kingston College in Jamaica and London University in the UK.

He began his career in the judiciary as an assistant clerk in the late 1940s, and later rose to the rank of deputy registrar in the Court of Appeal before making his gradual climb to become a justice of the Jamaica Court of Appeal.

He has also served as associate tutor for a span of 25 years at the Normal Manley Law School in Jamaica.

On his departure from Belize 5 years ago, Carey noted that “…even the Prime Minister [Dean Barrow] himself was one of my students and I can say that anybody who has done law from Belize and attended Norman Manley Law School up to 1997 would have been aware of me.”

Carey’s 2010 departure from Belize was controversial. It had been reported that Carey had been asked by former Solicitor General Oscar Ramjeet to relinquish his lifetime appointment as Justice of the Court of Appeal, and it was observed that he had later complied in a dignified way.

Carey said, on the occasion of his farewell: “…as a centurion under orders, I was commanded to come over to Macedonia; I came. Now I receive orders to demit office at this time, the end of the March session; dutifully, as commanded, I goeth.”

He was replaced, by means of an appointment by the Senate, with Senior Counsel Denys Barrow, the Prime Minister’s brother, who has since demitted that office for private practice.

Prime Minister Barrow said of his former law teacher in November 2010 that “Justice Carey did give excellent service.” Responding to charges that his Government had pushed Carey out of office, Barrow said that in his view, Justice Carey had served his time.

“He was 81 years old, and there needed to be space made on the Court of Appeal—and I will not apologize for this—in order to help with the process of ‘Belizeanation,’” Barrow had stated.

The following year, Carey, who had sat on a number of high profile cases—including the challenge to the Government’s nationalization of Belize Telemedia Limited and the challenge to the Sixth Amendment to the Belize Constitution and the question of whether a referendum would be required to institute ‘preventative detention’—was returned to the bench as a temporary judge, and Trinidadian justice Douglas Mendes was simultaneously appointed as a new Justice to the Court of Appeal, but he has since demitted office and served recently as counsel for Maurice Tomlinson in the LGBT challenge to Belize’s Immigration laws.

Carey, who was also one of the Court of Appeal justices who heard the case of dismissed Supreme Court Justice George Meerabux, leaves behind a resume of very prominent service on his passing. When he said farewell to Belize, he noted that his motto has been carpe diem: seize the day!

“That means I work hard—and when I play, I maintain that standard….” he jested.

Boyd Carey married Beverly Townsend in 1969 and together they had 1 son and 3 daughters.

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