Rhett Fuller is now approaching the 15th year in his campaign to resist extradition to the USA. He is wanted in that country for the first-degree murder of American Larry Miller, which occurred on March 22, 1990.
Since the Belizean Courts started extradition proceedings against him in 1998, he has been in jail, out of jail, and back again while taking all legal avenues available to him from the Supreme Court, to the Appeal Court, all the way up to the Privy Council. In each hearing, his appeals were met with failures. That is up until today when he got a major break from the Court of Appeal.
It's in relation to his application of judicial review of the decision by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wilfred Elrington, to refuse to deny the extradition request. In September of 2011, Elrington heard applications in a tribunal as final arbiter as to why it was unjust to allow the extradition to proceed. He denied those applications, and Fuller's attorney, Eamon Courtenay, filed an appeal which was heard in October of last year.
It was an extensive hearing, in which Courtenay put forward several grounds including information from Wikileaks in which 3 US diplomatic cables documented communication between Elrington and US Embassy representatives, which show that Elrington may have introduced bias in decision. After combing through all the material in the case, the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment this morning that Fullers Appeal is allowed on 2 main grounds. Those were of bad faith from the US Government in relation to those cables, and that the Foreign Minister did not fully exercise his jurisdiction to consider whether or not the delayed extradition process was unjust and oppressive to Fuller, as he is fully entitled to under the law.
After a long uphill battle, it's a major victory, and Eamon Courtenay explained the significance of it:
Eamon Courtenay - Attorney
"I haven't had a chance to read the decision, but in effect what the Court of Appeal did was to quash the decision of Minister Elrington. As you know Mr. Elrington had ordered that Mr. Fuller be sent to the United States in pursuance of the request for extradition, and that matter was heard by Mr. Justice Awich. He decided that the Minister's decision was correct. We brought it on appeal and we had a 2 day appeal hearing. The court has now said that the Minister's decision cannot stand, and they had ordered the Minister to re-hear it. What the President mentioned is that they have given him guidance as to how to do that hearing. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read it but my client is quite happy by the decision and again we propose to very vigorously resist the request for extradition."
Reporter
"What happens next? Your client remains remanded until the Minister has time to go through his own process."
Eamon Courtenay
"Well at present he is remanded and the question of whether we will apply for bail does arise. That depends on how long it will take and that sort of thing - as you know we had applied for bail before and it was refused but on the question on bail Mr. Fuller has never been a flight risk. He has always stayed in Belize, so we will certainly give consideration for request for a bail be granted for Mr. Fuller."
Fuller, being the appellant, was also awarded costs in relation to this hearing. The order of the Appeal Court on costs will be final unless the Government of Belize makes an application within 7 days. Both Fuller and his wife were overjoyed to finally get a break in his case. Fuller has been remanded to the Hattieville prison since August of 2011.
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