Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The State has been or­dered to pay more than $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to two broth­ers who were framed by po­lice for mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered on Tues­day, High Court Judge West­min James up­held the broth­ers’ claims for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion.

The broth­ers’ iden­ti­ties were with­held af­ter their at­tor­ney, Dar­ryl Heer­alal, raised se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns about them re­ceiv­ing the com­pen­sa­tion.

The case arose from the ex­e­cu­tion of a search war­rant at their moth­er’s San­ta Cruz home on June 14, 2019.

Po­lice of­fi­cers claimed they found a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na at the house and charged the broth­ers with mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing, al­leg­ing the prop­er­ty was with­in 500 me­tres of a school.

The broth­ers, a busi­ness­man and a disc jock­ey/mu­sic pro­duc­er, main­tained that no il­le­gal items were found dur­ing the search.

They al­leged the of­fi­cers fab­ri­cat­ed the drug traf­fick­ing case be­cause they failed to find il­le­gal firearms or am­mu­ni­tion.

The broth­ers were de­tained at two po­lice sta­tions for sev­er­al days be­fore be­ing charged and tak­en to court.

The crim­i­nal charges were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by a mag­is­trate af­ter the re­peat­ed fail­ure of the charg­ing of­fi­cer to at­tend court.

The of­fi­cer, PC Lester Dwari­ka, tes­ti­fied in the civ­il tri­al be­fore Jus­tice James.

He said the search war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed af­ter a three-month sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tion at the prop­er­ty, part of which was used by one of the broth­ers as a record­ing stu­dio and was lo­cat­ed near a preschool.

Dwari­ka claimed that dur­ing the search, the broth­er who op­er­at­ed the stu­dio was caught at­tempt­ing to hide the drugs be­neath a stair­case.

How­ev­er, while Dwari­ka claimed he at­tend­ed every court hear­ing ex­cept the date of the broth­ers’ tri­al, court tran­scripts showed he was late or ab­sent on mul­ti­ple pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions.

In rul­ing in favour of the broth­ers, Jus­tice James said he care­ful­ly con­sid­ered the ev­i­dence of the broth­ers, Dwari­ka and the oth­er of­fi­cers in­volved in the raid with­out pre­sum­ing ei­ther mis­con­duct or pro­pri­ety.

“In the present case, it is not any gen­er­al sus­pi­cion of the po­lice that has led the Court to this con­clu­sion,” Jus­tice James said.

“Rather, it is the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of the ma­te­r­i­al in­con­sis­ten­cies, con­tra­dic­tions, im­prob­a­bil­i­ties and de­fi­cien­cies in the De­fen­dant’s ev­i­dence, viewed against the to­tal­i­ty of the ev­i­dence, which has sat­is­fied the Court, on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties, that the De­fen­dant’s ac­count can­not safe­ly be ac­cept­ed,” he added.

Al­though the judge found some in­con­sis­ten­cies in the broth­ers’ ev­i­dence, he said they re­lat­ed to col­lat­er­al mat­ters that were not cen­tral to the case.

He con­clud­ed that the of­fi­cers had nei­ther rea­son­able nor prob­a­ble cause to charge the broth­ers and had act­ed with mal­ice.

“Such con­duct con­sti­tutes a de­lib­er­ate abuse of pub­lic pow­er and strikes at the very in­tegri­ty of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” Jus­tice James said.

The judge award­ed each broth­er $252,500 in com­pen­sa­tion, com­pris­ing $75,000 for wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment, $120,000 for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion, $50,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages and $7,500 to re­im­burse le­gal fees in­curred in de­fend­ing the crim­i­nal charges.

Jus­tice James said the ex­em­plary dam­ages were in­tend­ed to de­nounce op­pres­sive and ar­bi­trary con­duct by pub­lic of­fi­cials and de­ter sim­i­lar be­hav­iour in the fu­ture.

“Where pub­lic of­fi­cers know­ing­ly mis­use the crim­i­nal process against in­no­cent cit­i­zens, the law must make clear that such con­duct can­not oc­cur with im­puni­ty,” he said.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay just over $100,000 in le­gal costs in­curred by the broth­ers in pur­su­ing the civ­il claim.

Jus­tice James grant­ed a 28-day stay of ex­e­cu­tion of the judg­ment to al­low the State time to con­sid­er an ap­peal.

The broth­ers were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kir­by Joseph.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Raquel Le Blanc and Niki­ta Ali.