A handy­man and care­tak­er, who was forced to spend 10 days on re­mand af­ter be­ing charged with lit­ter­ing in 2015, is set to re­ceive al­most $160,000 for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. 

The man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held by Guardian Me­dia be­cause of his fear of be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals be­cause of his re­cent wind­fall, re­ceived the com­pen­sa­tion af­ter his at­tor­neys ne­go­ti­at­ed a set­tle­ment of his ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case with the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, ear­li­er this month. 

The con­sent or­der be­tween the par­ties was en­tered be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim. 

The man was ar­rest­ed at a health clin­ic in Ari­ma, where he worked, on May 16, 2015. 

Po­lice of­fi­cers, who were on mo­bile pa­trol in the area, ar­rest­ed and charged him af­ter they al­leged­ly saw him throw a bot­tle that nar­row­ly missed a garbage bin in the clin­ic’s car park. 

The man was ini­tial­ly grant­ed $10,000 bail but was forced to re­main on re­mand un­til his at­tor­ney Kyle For­tune ap­plied for a vari­a­tion of his bail, 10 days lat­er. 

In his brief stint in prison, the man was made to share a small cell with nine oth­er men, in­clud­ing one ac­cused of rape and two ac­cused of mur­der. 

Dur­ing the tri­al of the case, PC St Clair, the of­fi­cer, who charged the man, claimed that he and his col­leagues had asked him to pick up the bot­tle and place it in the bin but he re­fused. 

PC St Clair, who was re­vealed to be from the same vil­lage as the man, al­so claimed that the bot­tle fell on the road­way and not in the clin­ic’s pri­vate car park.

The man de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that he ex­plained to the of­fi­cers that he would dis­pose of the bot­tle lat­er as he did not want to leave the clin­ic’s stock­room un­at­tend­ed at the time.

The man, whose job re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ed clean­ing the car park, claimed that de­spite his reser­va­tions he com­plied with the of­fi­cers’ re­quest but was still ar­rest­ed. 

Dur­ing the tri­al, For­tune suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to ten­der footage from the clin­ic’s CCTV cam­eras, which proved his client’s claims. 

In 2017, the man was ac­quit­ted of the charge un­der the Lit­ter Act, which car­ries a max­i­mum fine of $4,000. The leg­is­la­tion al­so makes pro­vi­sions for per­sons to be tick­et­ed for the of­fence in­stead of be­ing ar­rest­ed like in the man’s case. The man was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Shan­ice Ed­wards.