The State has been or­dered to pay $75,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a man from Curepe, who was ar­rest­ed and de­tained in prison for al­most 18 hours over an al­leged­ly out­stand­ing traf­fic tick­et, which was in fact paid.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for An­to­nio Jack, of Curepe, yes­ter­day, as he up­held his con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit over what tran­spired.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment in the case dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled the er­ror, which was due to the lack of a com­put­erised data­base to mon­i­tor the pay­ments of such fixed-penal­ty tick­ets, was un­fath­omable, un­ac­cept­able and avoid­able.

“The fac­tu­al ma­trix which un­fold­ed in this case demon­strates with cer­tain­ty that if we  con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in a di­men­sion which is de­void of dig­i­ti­za­tion and fail to de­vel­op process­es which en­able in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty of ser­vices as  be­tween the var­i­ous agen­cies and or­gans of State, our democ­ra­cy and dig­ni­ty as a peo­ple will de­scend in­to dys­func­tion,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He sug­gest­ed that Jack’s case should be used as a cat­a­lyst for the mod­erni­sa­tion of the process.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that an elec­tron­ic sys­tem could be es­tab­lished which would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly reg­is­ter the pay­ment of a fine and is­sue a re­ceipt. The sug­gest­ed re­al-time data­base would be eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble by the en­force­ment di­vi­sion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Seep­er­sad high­light­ed tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments in the reg­is­ter­ing of deeds, births, and com­pa­nies, which al­ready have been in­tro­duced. 

“How­ev­er, dig­i­ti­za­tion can­not oc­cur in si­los and there must be in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty which en­ables the re­ceipt of ser­vices and the seam­less ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion as be­tween the var­i­ous arms and func­tionar­ies of the State. Such a sys­tem would min­i­mize the risk of man­u­al ad­min­is­tra­tive short­com­ings,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in Jack’s case, on Ju­ly 28, 2017, he was is­sued a $1,000 tick­et for ex­ceed­ing the speed lim­it by 26 km/h and he paid it two months lat­er.

Around 1 am on Feb­ru­ary, 22, 2019, po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed an ar­rest war­rant at Jack’s home.

Al­though Jack plead­ed with the of­fi­cers to show them his re­ceipt for pay­ing the fine, he was still ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

He was kept there for sev­er­al hours be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion.

He was then tak­en to the Gold­en Grove State Prison in Arou­ca, where he was sub­ject­ed to a strip search be­fore be­ing placed in a cell.

He was on­ly re­leased around 6.30 pm af­ter his sis­ter paid the fine for a sec­ond time af­ter hear­ing of his ar­rest. He sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived a re­fund.

In his judge­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that Jack’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights had been breached in the in­ci­dent.

“The pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens’ en­shrined rights is para­mount as it is sacro­sanct,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Last year, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was as­signed to pre­side over a case brought by Patrick Awong, who had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence to Jack.

Awong, the broth­er of Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Hen­ry Awong, was on­ly de­tained for eight hours and re­ceived $37,500 in com­pen­sa­tion.

Jack was rep­re­sent­ed by Tama­ra Gre­go­rio.

— Derek Achong