Rhett Fuller was back before the Court of Appeal today where he is fighting extradition to Florida to face an almost 20 year old murder charge. Yesterday his attorney Eamon Courtenay asked Justices Elliott Mottley, Dennis Morrison and Manuel Sosa for time to search for any provisions in Belize’s law authorizing the Minister of Foreign Affairs to issue an extradition warrant. Well after what he described as an exhaustive search last night, Courtenay told the judges this morning that he found nothing. In fact he says that if we go by Belize’s law, it was outright illegal for the extradition warrant for Rhett Fuller to have been issued. The judges were unconvinced and have asked for the legal arguments in writing. Courtenay however is optimistic.
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Rhett Fuller
“It doesn’t seem to me so far, from the research that I have found, that there is anything that would authorize the Minister to grant the order that he did. As I said the case from St. Kitts doesn’t seem to me to be a case that the Lordship will follow. It is our submission that there
is no law in Belize that gives anybody that power. The law as we see in Bahamas was amended to do it, the law in other countries have all been amended to give the power to somebody specifically. I think it is an oversight in our case.
My expectation is that their lordship will find that first of all this was a completely illegal act to initiate the extradition of Mr. Fuller. It is illegal because in our submission the Extradition Act of 1870 did not authorize the Minister of Foreign Affairs to start it. But beyond that, it is our submission that this is an entire abuse of the process of this court. The facts of this case are that Mr. Fuller is accused of supposedly being part of some thing that happened in 1990. Nothing happened in court until 1998. Now that is an abuse to wait eight years before you start a case. We are going to argue that it should have been stopped, the United States government should have been told immediately that that is an abuse and we are asking the Court of Appeal to find it so. We believe that the matter will be dismissed, that Mr. Fuller’s request, the request for Mr. Fuller’s extradition will be denied.”
Courtenay will submit his legal arguments by the end of November and government has until January to submit its written arguments. The case was adjourned until February. Fuller is accused of being involved in a robbery in 1990 in Florida. During the robbery Larry Miller was killed. The United States submitted its extradition request in 1998. The appeal has been pending since 2002.
