Man jailed for eight years despite being cleared of charges wins $1.1M

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

A man who was mis­tak­en­ly kept in prison for eight years af­ter be­ing freed of an ar­son charge has won his ap­peal seek­ing in­creased com­pen­sa­tion.

Last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Prakash Moo­sai, Gillian Lucky and Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well up­held Wen­dell Beck­les' ap­peal against the $800,000 in com­pen­sa­tion he was award­ed for false im­pris­on­ment.

The ap­peal pan­el found that the High Court Mas­ter, who as­sessed the com­pen­sa­tion for Beck­les in 2018, failed to con­sid­er his men­tal suf­fer­ing and the fact that he was on­ly re­leased af­ter fil­ing le­gal ac­tion.

The pan­el or­dered that Beck­les should in­stead re­ceive $1 mil­lion in gen­er­al dam­ages, in ad­di­tion to the $100,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages al­so award­ed by the Mas­ter.

Beck­les was ar­rest­ed and charged with ar­son in 1999.

Al­though he was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al af­ter a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) re­mit­ted the case to a mag­is­trate to take fur­ther ev­i­dence.

Beck­les was even­tu­al­ly dis­charged by the mag­is­trate in De­cem­ber 2001.

The mag­is­trate's de­ci­sion was not com­mu­ni­cat­ed to prison of­fi­cials, and Beck­les was kept on re­mand un­til he was re­leased in Sep­tem­ber 2009, af­ter his at­tor­neys, Mark and Visha­la Seep­er­sad, pur­sued a habeas cor­pus writ.

Beck­les' lawyers then pur­sued a civ­il law­suit over what had tran­spired. The case was not de­fend­ed by the State, and Beck­les was award­ed a de­fault judg­ment.

In May 2012, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in or­dered $2.1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for Beck­les.

Beck­les re­ceived the sig­nif­i­cant award even though Jus­tice Gob­in found that he could on­ly claim com­pen­sa­tion for the last four years of his un­law­ful de­ten­tion, based on a four-year statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od for bring­ing such law­suits af­ter a cause of ac­tion aris­es.

Stat­ing that no amount of mon­ey could com­pen­sate Beck­les for the wrong met­ed out to him, Jus­tice Gob­in said: "It was es­sen­tial that the Court made an award that sent a sig­nal to the au­thor­i­ties that this kind of ne­glect of the rights of per­sons in their charge would be treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly."

The State ap­pealed the quan­tum award­ed, and the Court of Ap­peal re­mit­ted the case to Mas­ter Pa­tri­cia So­bion-Awai for re­assess­ment.

Mas­ter So­bion-Awai de­liv­ered her de­ci­sion, which was the sub­ject of the re­cent ap­peal, in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

In de­cid­ing the ap­peal, Jus­tice Moo­sai found that Mas­ter So­bion-Awai was wrong to have failed to con­sid­er the trau­ma Beck­les en­dured dur­ing the first four years of his un­law­ful in­car­cer­a­tion, even though she was not per­mit­ted to award com­pen­sa­tion di­rect­ly based on that pe­ri­od.

"With the great­est of re­spect to the Mas­ter, it is whol­ly un­re­al­is­tic to have con­clud­ed that the ap­pel­lant’s men­tal dis­tress and suf­fer­ing would have been con­fined on­ly to that pe­ri­od of time for which the law per­mit­ted him to be com­pen­sat­ed," Jus­tice Moo­sai said.

"To our minds, the bet­ter ap­proach would have been to recog­nise that those four years im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the pe­ri­od for which he was to be com­pen­sat­ed un­doubt­ed­ly im­pact­ed his men­tal state, and while no dam­ages could ac­crue to him for that statute-barred pe­ri­od, any award ought to prop­er­ly re­flect the toll that that pe­ri­od would nonethe­less have tak­en," he added.

Jus­tice Moo­sai al­so ruled that the Mas­ter should have con­sid­ered the cir­cum­stances in which the er­ror con­cern­ing Beck­les was recog­nised.

"We find our­selves in agree­ment, and hold the view that this was a par­tic­u­lar­ly ag­gra­vat­ing fea­ture be­cause it not on­ly am­pli­fies the care­less in­com­pe­tence of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, but le­git­i­mate­ly rais­es the ques­tion as to what may have be­come of the ap­pel­lant had he not made such an ap­pli­ca­tion," Jus­tice Moo­sai said.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Mon­i­ca Smith and Lau­ra Per­sad.