Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The State has been or­dered to pay a lit­tle over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a cannabis ac­tivist and mem­bers’ club own­er for false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad made the or­der yes­ter­day as he up­held a law­suit brought by Loren­zo Mendez-Stew­art at the end of a brief tri­al at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

The case re­lat­ed to Mendez-Stew­art’s ar­rest for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion on Oc­to­ber 12, 2018.

Po­lice of­fi­cers claimed that they saw Mendez-Stew­art stand­ing out­side Gh­i­no’s Mem­bers Club in Wood­brook and that he ran in­side up­on see­ing them.

They claimed that they en­tered and found him hold­ing a bag con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na.

Mendez-Stew­art was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was charged.

He spent two hours in cus­tody be­fore he was grant­ed sta­tion bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace.

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charge was dis­missed by a mag­is­trate.

Tes­ti­fy­ing yes­ter­day, Mendez-Stew­art ten­dered CCTV footage of the po­lice ex­er­cise, which was al­so con­sid­ered by the mag­is­trate.

He said that he was nev­er on the side­walk as claimed and con­tend­ed that the of­fi­cers plant­ed the mar­i­jua­na on him.

Mendez-Stew­art’s broth­er, Gh­i­no, who is the co-own­er of the club that bears his name, al­so tes­ti­fied to cor­rob­o­rate his sib­ling’s ver­sion of the events.

In de­fence of the case, WPC Matthews, who laid the charge, chal­lenged the sib­lings’ ev­i­dence.

While be­ing in­tense­ly cross-ex­am­ined by Mendez-Stew­art’s lawyer, Naveen Maraj, she claimed that the CCTV footage was edit­ed to in­clude footage from an­oth­er raid on the es­tab­lish­ment, which oc­curred af­ter Mendez-Stew­art’s ar­rest.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the sib­lings were more cred­i­ble than Matthews.

He not­ed that the footage show­ing that Mendez-Stew­art was not on the side­walk when the po­lice ar­rived was ver­i­fied by Matthews’ col­league, who al­so tes­ti­fied in the case.

De­scrib­ing Matthews’ ev­i­dence as re­mark­able, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the mag­is­trate dis­missed the charge due to ma­te­r­i­al in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween the ev­i­dence giv­en by the of­fi­cers and the CCTV footage.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that the case high­light­ed the im­por­tance of video ev­i­dence.

“Con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous video record­ings re­al­ly form the best ev­i­dence... It re­al­ly re­duces the fal­li­bil­i­ty of hu­man rec­ol­lec­tion,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Mendez-Stew­art, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered $25,000 for false im­pris­on­ment, as he was on­ly held in cus­tody for a short pe­ri­od be­fore be­ing grant­ed bail.

He or­dered $100,000 for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and $50,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages to high­light the court’s crit­i­cism of the po­lice of­fi­cers’ con­duct.

“The court can­not sanc­tion a po­lice of­fi­cer be­ing such a stranger to the truth,” he said.

While he not­ed that Par­lia­ment had been re­luc­tant to pass leg­is­la­tion to hold er­rant po­lice of­fi­cers per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for com­pen­sa­tion in such cas­es, he stat­ed that the dam­ages were still nec­es­sary even if they do not di­rect­ly pun­ish those re­spon­si­ble for wrong­do­ing.

“The court will con­tin­ue to im­pose these awards as long as the ev­i­dence re­quires,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so or­dered the State to pay Mendez-Stew­art the al­most $20,000 in le­gal fees he ex­pend­ed in de­fend­ing the charges, as well as his le­gal costs for the law­suit be­fore him.

Mendez-Stew­art was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ra­jiv Sochan and Bernadette Arneaud. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Akee­nie Mur­ray and Gay­a­tri Dass.