Nine Years, No Trial: Court Rules Paumen’s Rights Violated

Earlier this month, High Court Judge Martha Lynette Alexander has ruled that Bradley Paumen’s right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time, guaranteed under section 6(2) of the Belize Constitution, has been violated. The case, Claim No. CV29 of 2025, arose from a criminal prosecution that has been pending for nearly a decade without reaching trial.

Paumen, a 68-year-old businessman and owner of Dark Night Cave Tubing Adventure Park in the Cayo District, was charged on 7 January 2016 with four counts of abetment of murder. The allegations, stemming from events reported on 5 January 2016, are that he solicited a man named Jerome Crawford to kill four people: attorney-at-law Nazira Myles, businessman Michael Modiri, security officer Paul Wade, and a man named Juan Shol, who was said to be an intended witness in related civil proceedings. Paumen entered pleas of not guilty and has been on bail ever since.

Justice Alexander found the nine-year pre-trial delay “plainly excessive” and constitutionally unreasonable. The judge identified what she called “sustained institutional inaction” as the dominant cause of delay, particularly the period from mid-2020 to mid-2024, during which the case effectively sat in administrative limbo following two judicial recusals.

During that four-year stretch, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) repeatedly tried to find out which judge was handling the file, sending written inquiries, attending court, and copying the Chief Justice, only to receive conflicting information. At one point, the court’s own registry told the DPP a judge was assigned; that judge then said it was someone else; and that second judge said no file had ever been placed before them.

The court did acknowledge that some delay was attributable to Paumen’s side: defence-initiated adjournments in 2019 and 2020 due to bereavement and illness, and a recusal application against Moore that was brought eighteen months after the relevant circumstances arose. The court also recognised the COVID-19 pandemic as an extraordinary intervening event. But even taking those factors at their highest against Paumen, Justice Alexander found they accounted for “under two years”, leaving the bulk of nine years unexplained by anything other than the State’s own systemic failures.

Paumen’s legal team, led by Magali Marin-Young SC and Allister T. Jenkins, sought three forms of relief: a declaration that his constitutional right was violated; a permanent stay of the criminal proceedings; and damages, both compensatory (for financial losses to his US farming operations and Belize tourism business) and vindicatory (to mark the gravity of the constitutional wrong).

He got only the declaration. The court also ordered that the criminal case be urgently listed before Justice Creary-Dixon for case management, with a trial date to be set as a priority.

However, the court stopped short of halting the matter outright. A permanent stay will only take effect if the trial does not begin within six months of the order, through no material fault of Paumen.

The judge refused to declare that a fair trial is no longer possible and declined to grant a permanent stay, compensatory damages, or vindicatory damages, finding no proven link between the delay and the alleged business losses and ruling that the declaration and expedited listing were sufficient remedies. Each party will bear its own legal costs.

A few days ago, Paumen was shot multiple times in a home invasion at his Frank’s Eddy residence. He is currently recovering in hospital. Police have detained one suspect and are seeking two others.