DEREK ACHONG

A gar­den­er from Rio Claro is set to re­ceive more than $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion af­ter be­ing framed by po­lice for mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing near­ly two decades ago.

On May 29, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed up­held a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit filed by the man, whose iden­ti­ty has been with­held at the re­quest of his at­tor­neys, Shawn Roop­nar­ine and Stephen Boodram, due to po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns over the size of the com­pen­sa­tion.

The judge as­sessed the dam­ages in a writ­ten rul­ing de­liv­ered yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on March 12, 2004, when the man went to the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion to en­quire about his im­pound­ed ve­hi­cle. While there, he was ar­rest­ed by a po­lice of­fi­cer who al­leged that ear­li­er that day he had been seen run­ning from an aban­doned house in Cushe Vil­lage, where a large quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered.

The man de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion, stat­ing that he had been tend­ing to his near­by gar­den—where he had parked his car—at the time of the po­lice raid.

He was charged with mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing, grant­ed bail, and sub­se­quent­ly made dozens of court ap­pear­ances. In 2008, fol­low­ing a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, a mag­is­trate com­mit­ted him to stand tri­al. His case fi­nal­ly went to tri­al in late 2017, and he was ac­quit­ted by a nine-mem­ber ju­ry.

The man lat­er sued the State, claim­ing that the of­fi­cers lacked rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to charge him and had act­ed with mal­ice in pur­su­ing the case.

In her rul­ing, Jus­tice Mo­hammed award­ed the man $164,808 in spe­cial dam­ages for le­gal fees and trans­porta­tion costs in­curred dur­ing the 13-year-long crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. She al­so or­dered the State to pay $300,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for the de­pri­va­tion of his lib­er­ty, in­jury to his rep­u­ta­tion, and the emo­tion­al toll of fac­ing a se­ri­ous crim­i­nal charge.

“The in­jury to the claimant’s rep­u­ta­tion would have been sub­stan­tial, as the pe­ri­od of the pros­e­cu­tion was long—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13 years,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed stat­ed.

“In my opin­ion, it was more prob­a­ble that the pros­e­cu­tion of the claimant for the se­ri­ous of­fence of pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous drug for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing would have had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on his feel­ings, in light of the con­se­quences if he were found guilty,” she added.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so award­ed $20,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages, con­demn­ing the of­fi­cers’ con­duct in fab­ri­cat­ing the case.

“In my view, such ac­tion by the of­fi­cers, as agents of the State, was op­pres­sive,” she said.

In ad­di­tion, the court or­dered the State to pay $69,980 to cov­er the le­gal costs of the civ­il law­suit.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Keron May­nard and Ria Br­ere­ton.