Court Orders JLSC to Pay Up

The High Court of Belize has ruled that the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC) failed to properly respond to activist Jeremy Enriquez after he filed a misconduct complaint against Justice Tawanda Hondora during Belize’s redistricting court battle.

Enriquez alleged that an unmuted microphone exposed a troubling conversation between Justice Hondora and another judge during a lunch break, causing him to lose confidence in the judge’s ability to continue presiding over the case. He submitted recordings to the JLSC and waited. The Commission repeatedly responded with what the court described as vague, one-liner acknowledgements.

Justice Alexander rejected the JLSC’s argument that Enriquez had acted impatiently, finding he “acted reasonably in filing his application.” The court ruled the Commission’s conduct was against the spirit of Belize’s pre-action protocols and ordered it to pay Enriquez’s costs.

“The matter could have been easily avoided by a more responsive and reasonable conduct of the JLSC,” the judgement stated.

Enriquez asked the court to award him legal costs and to certify that the case was complex enough to justify having both a senior and junior lawyer on his team, which means the JLSC would have to pay for both. The judge agreed, saying that if the JLSC had simply followed proper procedure, Enriquez never would have needed to file in the first place.

The final amount is still to be determined.