sto­ries by Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tives of a man from Diego Mar­tin, re­spon­si­ble for a land­mark case which al­lowed bail to be con­sid­ered for peo­ple charged with mur­der, are set to re­ceive a lit­tle over $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

In 2022, the Court of Ap­peal and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil both up­held a nov­el case from Ak­ili Charles chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of a blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion pre­vent­ing ju­di­cial of­fi­cers from con­sid­er­ing bail for those ac­cused of the cap­i­tal of­fence.

While both courts or­dered that Charles be com­pen­sat­ed for breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, the as­sess­ment was on­ly com­plet­ed by High Court Mas­ter Sher­lanne Pierre last week.

Charles’ fam­i­ly will ben­e­fit from the wind­fall as his moth­er, Meli­na, was al­lowed to con­tin­ue the lit­i­ga­tion on be­half of his es­tate, as he was mur­dered days af­ter scor­ing the land­mark vic­to­ry al­most four years ago.

Charles, Chic­ki Por­tillo, Gomez, Levi Joseph, Is­rael “Arnold” Lara and An­ton Cam­bridge were charged with mur­der­ing Rus­sell An­toine on May 13, 2010.

An­toine, 27, was walk­ing along Up­per Ceme­tery Street, Diego Mar­tin, when he was shot sev­er­al times.

An­toine’s friends, Mar­cus and Joseph Spring, were wound­ed in the in­ci­dent, and the group was al­so charged with shoot­ing them with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm.

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in the case went on for al­most nine years and had reached an ad­vanced stage when then chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar took up a pro­mo­tion as a High Court Judge in April 2017.

Charles and his co-ac­cused caused what was de­scribed as a near-ri­ot at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court when Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor, then-Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, first sug­gest­ed that their pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry may have to be restart­ed.

The in­quiry was put on hold while a law­suit from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, over what pro­ce­dure should be adopt­ed in sit­u­a­tions where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers leave their of­fice with part-heard cas­es still pend­ing, was be­ing pur­sued.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in even­tu­al­ly ruled that such cas­es had to be restart­ed.

Charles and his neigh­bours’ case was then restart­ed and com­plet­ed with­in four months.

All six men were freed of the charges as Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle ruled that the State failed to present suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charge.

Charles was award­ed al­most $300,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the breach­es of his rights due to the de­lay.

His lawyers from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, filed a nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge over bail for mur­der.

The case was re­ject­ed by a High Court Judge be­fore be­ing up­held by a three-mem­ber ap­peal pan­el led by for­mer Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. The rul­ing has been de­scribed as Archie’s great­est con­tri­bu­tion to lo­cal ju­rispru­dence dur­ing his time at the helm of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Months lat­er, the Privy Coun­cil up­held the prece­dent set by the lo­cal court.

Lord Nicholas Ham­blen, who de­liv­ered the board’s de­ci­sion, ruled that al­though the Bail Act was passed by a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty of Par­lia­ment in 1994, it did not rea­son­ably jus­ti­fy the in­fringe­ment of cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in re­la­tion to ap­ply­ing for bail.

He said the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion against con­sid­er­ing bail for mur­der was es­pe­cial­ly high­light­ed by what tran­spired in Charles’ case.

“That is vivid­ly il­lus­trat­ed by the facts of the present case in which it was ul­ti­mate­ly found that the re­spon­dent had no case to an­swer; in the mean­while, he spent near­ly eight and a half years in cus­tody,” Lord Ham­blen said.

The com­pen­sa­tion or­dered last week was main­ly based on the eight and a half years Charles spent on re­mand while be­ing un­able to ap­ply for bail be­fore his pro­tract­ed case was even­tu­al­ly de­ter­mined.

Mas­ter Pierre re­fused to spec­u­late over whether Charles would have been grant­ed bail by a judge if the pro­hi­bi­tion did not ex­ist.

She ruled that as he was de­nied the right to ap­ply since he was charged “each day of his de­ten­tion rep­re­sent­ed the con­tin­u­a­tion of the breach of his right”.

She al­so con­sid­ered the in­hu­mane con­di­tions that Charles en­dured while on re­mand in­clud­ing cramped cells, poor ven­ti­la­tion and san­i­ta­tion.

“The con­di­tions to which Mr Charles was sub­ject­ed were ap­palling, in­tol­er­a­ble and in­hu­mane,” she said.

She or­dered $700,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $450,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay his le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Charles was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, Ganesh Sa­roop, Vishaal Siewsaran and Natasha Bis­ram.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, Nicol Yee Fung, Sharon Raghu­nath, Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj and Vin­cent Jar­dine.