BELIZE CITY, Fri. Oct. 19, 2018– The imposing woman police corporal stood outside the courtroom door and signaled for me to go outside. Freelance court reporter, Roy Davis, was standing next to her. I figured Davis wanted to see me, so I signaled with my hand, not now! The corporal then entered the courtroom and came and stood beside me, as I continued my note taking.
Supreme Court Justice Colin Williams had just begun pronouncing his sentence on a Dangriga man who had pleaded guilty to an indictment of causing death by carless conduct.
“You have to go outside. No standing in the courtroom,” the corporal whispered to me.
“I am only doing my job,” I whispered back, as I continued taking my notes.
The corporal leaned over again and whispered, “If you don’t go outside, I will put you in the cell downstairs. Let’s go!”
Slowly, I began putting my notebook back into my backpack that was on the floor between my feet. With each deliberate slow movement, I was thinking, “Should I appeal to the judge or stage an open protest of the violation of my press freedom to cover an important verdict?”
Protesting in the courtroom carried with it some risk that I decided against, although standing up and taking notes in the court was my sacred right as a journalist, a right that was being violated.
As I walked out of the courtroom, the corporal, whose name I did not know, blithely walked behind.
Once we exited the courtroom and were outside in the corridor, she declared: “No standing in the corridor, you have to go outside.”
Without saying a word, I quietly walked outside, realizing that it’s Friday and it wouldn’t be wise for Amandala’s senior reporter to get into a confrontation with a woman police officer who had already exhibited some ignorance of my constitutional right to be inside any courtroom in the country for reporting purposes, or merely as a spectator.
Eventually, other reporters from the city’s media corps turned up to cover the verdict for the two men accused of murdering attorney Richard Stuart and his wife, Maria Fernandez Stuart, in 2010. But none of them were allowed to enter Justice Williams’ courtroom, where the single line of benches against the southern wall was filled with members of the victims’ families.
Reporters were made to wait outside because the corporal, whose name I later learned is Patricia Allen, attached to the Police Prosecution Branch, resorted to the use of threats in the handling of a simple thing like providing accommodation for members of the press who had gone to cover the verdict portion of the double-murder trial.
I would later learn from the Court Marshall, Glen Banner, who works in Justice Williams’ court, that he did not instruct the police to remove me for standing. “The police took it upon themselves,” Banner guessed.
When the courtrooms were designed, the colony of Belize did not have that many media personnel to cover a trial, so there was no provision for seating the press.
In the case of the Chief Justice’s courtroom, which is the largest in the country and was originally designed as the first National Assembly, reporters are allowed to sit on one side. This practice has been going on for years now.
Corporal Allen could have put the four prisoners on one of the jury benches and given the other bench to the media workers who had come to cover the double murder verdict, given the space constraints in that particular courtroom.
Better yet, why keep prisoners in court whose matters were not being dealt with as yet? Why aren’t they kept downstairs until the Marshall of the court called up their cases, and then the police could escort them into the court? That would make for less congestion in the smaller courtrooms.