Derek Achong

A 39-year-old man of Ari­ma has lost his ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit over be­ing charged for wound­ing a man, who he found in a ho­tel room with his then-wife. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment at the con­clu­sion of a brief tri­al at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed Raun Di­az’s law­suit against the State. 

Rul­ing that Di­az’s case was friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious, as the po­lice of­fi­cer who charged him had rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to do so and was not ma­li­cious, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered him to pay the State’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing his law­suit. 

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing the tri­al, the case stemmed from an in­ci­dent at Ho­tel Nor­mandie in St Ann’s on March 4, 2016. 

Di­az claimed he dropped his now ex-wife, an of­fice clerk, at the ho­tel, as she claimed she had to spend the night for an ap­point­ment with a client of her make-up artist’s busi­ness. 

Di­az claimed he be­came con­cerned the fol­low­ing day when she sent him a text mes­sage in­di­cat­ing that she no longer need­ed him to pick her up from the ho­tel. 

He claimed he re­turned to the ho­tel, went to his wife’s room, con­front­ed her and be­gan to search it. 

He claimed she in­vit­ed him to sit on the bed and when he did, he felt a jolt and saw a man crawl out from un­der it. 

Di­az claimed that the man drew a gun and there was a strug­gle, dur­ing which time both he and the man were shot. 

Di­az, who was shot on his left in­dex fin­ger, claimed that he drove to a friend’s house in Tacarigua, where he re­ceived as­sis­tance in treat­ing the in­jury, which left a por­tion of his fin­ger hang­ing from a strip of skin. 

Di­az sur­ren­dered to po­lice sev­er­al days lat­er and was charged with wound­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm af­ter re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al med­ical treat­ment at a hos­pi­tal.

Di­az was re­mand­ed in cus­tody for sev­er­al months be­fore he was even­tu­al­ly grant­ed bail. 

In Oc­to­ber 2018, the charge was dis­missed af­ter the of­fi­cer who charged him missed sev­er­al court hear­ings. 

Through the law­suit, Di­az was seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for his in­jury, for the al­leged em­bar­rass­ment from his pros­e­cu­tion and for his loss of earn­ings dur­ing his pe­ri­od of re­mand. 

In as­sess­ing the ev­i­dence in the case, Seep­er­sad not­ed that there were ma­te­r­i­al in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween Di­az’s claims be­fore him and in a writ­ten state­ment he gave to po­lice when he sur­ren­dered. 

While he said he could ac­cept mi­nor in­con­sis­ten­cies due to the pas­sage of time, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that Di­az could not be con­sid­ered a truth­ful wit­ness. 

Seep­er­sad not­ed that while Di­az claimed he was con­cerned about his wife, his re­ac­tion de­fied log­ic and prob­a­bil­i­ty, as it was in­con­sis­tent with a spouse who sus­pect­ed that his wife was com­mit­ting adul­tery. He ques­tioned why Di­az re­fused to seek med­ical at­ten­tion from a doc­tor or hos­pi­tal and in­stead went to a friend. 

Seep­er­sad point­ed out that it was un­like­ly that the man had the gun, as Di­az’s ex-wife claimed she did not see it dur­ing their time to­geth­er in the room. He al­so re­ject­ed claims from Di­az’s lawyer Criston J Williams, who ques­tioned why the in­ves­ti­ga­tor did not pro­vide a fin­ger­print analy­sis of the firearm be­fore the case was dis­missed.

Seep­er­sad said the fin­ger­prints of both men would have been on the weapon, as they both ad­mit­ted to hold­ing on to it dur­ing their al­ter­ca­tion. 

He not­ed that even if he was wrong on whether there was rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to charge Di­az, there was no ev­i­dence to prove that the in­ves­ti­ga­tor act­ed ma­li­cious­ly. 

“It is not the job of the com­plainant to weigh ver­sions and de­ter­mine if there was self-de­fence. That is a ju­ry or mag­is­trate ques­tion as the tri­bunal of fact,” Seep­er­sad said. 

Stat­ing that ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion cas­es were far too preva­lent, as al­most 20 per cent of the law­suits against the State on his dock­et are of a sim­i­lar na­ture, Seep­er­sad said they should on­ly be pur­sued by cit­i­zens in ex­cep­tion­al cas­es and not in every case in which crim­i­nal charges are dis­missed. 

Not­ing that such cas­es put a strain on the al­ready over­bur­dened jus­tice sys­tem, Seep­er­sad called for con­sid­er­a­tion on al­low­ing judges to grant leave for valid cas­es be­fore they go to tri­al as is done with ju­di­cial re­view law­suits. 

Di­az was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ce­leste St Louis while Nisa Sim­mons rep­re­sent­ed the State.

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