The senior courts of Belize have issued the first ever sentencing guidelines For Belize. These sentencing guidelines are expected to promote consistency, transparency, and fairness in sentencing practices across the criminal justice system. To gain a better idea as to how these new guidelines will impact the work within the criminal justice system we spoke with defense attorney Bryan Neal. He gave us an example as to how it will work.
Bryan Neal, Attorney
"I must commend the Chief justice and the other justices and other lawyers other stakeholders who participated in the exercise. This came out of what is called the Needhams points proposal which across the Caribbean we are trying to improve the administration of justice and I think this is one tool that will assist lawyers and the courts in improving the way guilty people are sentenced."
"I think it was a quite unfair process in the sense that what the courts would do if you are convicted let us say of Manslaughter they will look at different cases in which people were convicted of manslaughter and based on those sentences they would come to a sentence in a particular case but what the new guidelines have done now is to let the lawyers and the courts focus on the actual person who has been convicted to see if there is any special circumstances that the person maybe he is a good person or a good father a good grand son you take that into consideration and also you look at the actual offense that he committed. What that will do now is we've seen recently where one person like Mr Selgado was sentenced for a crime where no one died and he was given ten years and then you have Ms Hartin who was convicted and sentenced for a crime where a senior police officer died and was given a fine. What this will do now is to rationalize the process so that there is equality in sentencing from all judges so we won't have that kind of anomaly in the system again."
The Sentencing Guidelines were developed as part of the Senior Courts of Belize's Three-Year Strategic Plan, in line with the Needham's Point Declaration on Criminal Justice Reform and the Criminal Justice Board.
Email
Print