Derek Achong

Five Law Lords of the Privy Coun­cil ruled yes­ter­day that the High Court and Ap­peal Court in­cor­rect­ly cal­cu­lat­ed the com­pen­sa­tion award­ed to a vic­tim of ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion.In al­low­ing the ap­peal brought by Ter­rence Cal­ix, they said the $38,000 in dam­ages which was ini­tial­ly award­ed to him was "in­or­di­nate­ly low."The ap­pel­late judges did not re­assess the com­pen­sa­tion, in­stead they or­dered Cal­ix's case be re­mit­ted to the Court of Ap­peal for its re­con­sid­er­a­tion.

Lord Bri­an Kerr, who de­liv­ered the 13-page judg­ment, said: "That court is in a bet­ter po­si­tion to as­sess, in the lo­cal con­text, how sig­nif­i­cant was the fail­ure of the pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ties to fol­low the ad­vice of the po­lice of­fi­cer in charge of the case and to re­flect more as­sured­ly the im­pact of the ap­pel­lant's ex­pe­ri­ence in Gold­en Grove prison while on re­mand."In the judg­ment the pan­el ruled both lo­cal courts were wrong when they ac­cessed the dam­age that was done to Cal­ix's rep­u­ta­tion. They al­so said both courts were wrong in dis­miss­ing or re­duc­ing the com­pen­sa­tion which Cal­ix was en­ti­tled to for his loss of lib­er­ty.Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the ap­peal, Cal­ix, of Richard­son Street, Point Fortin, was ar­rest­ed in De­cem­ber 1998 af­ter a man was robbed and a woman raped in an in­ci­dent on his street. Cal­ix was de­scribed as a recluse who lived in an aban­doned house.

He was charged with both of­fences which were tried sep­a­rate­ly. In May 1999, Cal­ix was freed of the rob­bery charge af­ter a mag­is­trate up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion by his at­tor­ney. The mag­is­trate ruled that Cal­ix was iden­ti­fied in a de­fi­cient iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade.Even though both cas­es cen­tred around the same ev­i­dence and the ar­rest­ing of­fi­cer sug­gest­ed drop­ping the sec­ond charge, Cal­ix was still tried for rape.In Au­gust that year, Cal­ix was freed of the rape charge af­ter a sim­i­lar no-case sub­mis­sion.Cal­ix then sued the State for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. Al­though he was ini­tial­ly grant­ed bail Cal­ix did not ac­cess it. He spent 115 days in re­mand un­til he was even­tu­al­ly freed of the two charges.

High Court Judge James Aboud, who presided over the case, ruled in favour of Cal­ix and stat­ed that af­ter he was freed of the rob­bery charge, pros­e­cu­tors should have dis­con­tin­ued the rape mat­ter. Aboud award­ed Cal­ix $38,000 in dam­ages. Cal­ix ap­pealed, chal­leng­ing the amount of dam­ages award­ed in his case. His ap­peal was dis­missed by the Ap­peal Court.In his ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil, Cal­ix con­tend­ed that the Aboud had en­gaged in a se­ries of spec­u­la­tive as­sess­ments about him which had led to a plain­ly er­ro­neous eval­u­a­tion of the dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion.Lord Kerr said that Aboud main­ly fo­cused on Cal­ix's ec­cen­tric­i­ty, not­ing that al­though he (Cal­ix) had a rea­son­able ed­u­ca­tion he chose to live in squalor."Sim­ply be­cause he chose an un­con­ven­tion­al path, it should not be sup­posed that his good char­ac­ter was any less valu­able in ob­jec­tive terms or that it was any less cher­ished by him," Kerr said.