Man jailed over decade-old dismissed case awarded $225,000

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

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A High Court judge has award­ed more than $225,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a Ch­agua­nas me­chan­ic and farmer who was re-pros­e­cut­ed for lar­ce­ny near­ly a decade af­ter the charge against him had al­ready been dis­missed.

Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Su­ruj Sama­roo, of Carlsen Field Con­nec­tor Road, Ch­agua­nas, af­ter she up­held his con­sti­tu­tion­al claim al­leg­ing breach­es of his rights.

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the case, Sama­roo was charged in 2002 with steal­ing $15,895 worth of items from a man.

He missed a court hear­ing in Ju­ly 2004, and a war­rant was is­sued for his ar­rest. How­ev­er, the war­rant was nev­er ex­e­cut­ed, and he con­tin­ued to make sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charge was dis­missed by a mag­is­trate in Oc­to­ber 2005.

Near­ly ten years lat­er, in late May 2015, po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived at Sama­roo’s home to ex­e­cute the out­stand­ing 2004 war­rant.

Al­though he in­formed of­fi­cers that the mat­ter had al­ready been re­solved, he was de­tained and held at two po­lice sta­tions for sev­er­al hours be­fore be­ing tak­en to court.

He again ad­vised a mag­is­trate of the out­come of the case but was re­mand­ed to the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca for eight days be­fore be­ing able to se­cure bail.

Sama­roo sub­se­quent­ly made about a dozen court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charge was ul­ti­mate­ly dis­missed due to the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer’s fail­ure to at­tend court.

At each ap­pear­ance, he main­tained that the mat­ter had al­ready been dis­missed, but was told there was no en­dorse­ment in the court records con­firm­ing the dis­missal.

Through at­tor­neys Ab­del Mo­hammed and Kent Sam­lal, Sama­roo filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion claim­ing breach­es of his rights. He said he suf­fered dis­tress, hu­mil­i­a­tion and em­bar­rass­ment, and al­so in­curred fi­nan­cial loss­es due to his in­abil­i­ty to work dur­ing his de­ten­tion.

In her rul­ing, Jus­tice Wil­son found that Sama­roo was the vic­tim of a sys­temic fail­ure that re­sult­ed in the vi­o­la­tion of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

She re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that the mat­ter amount­ed to an iso­lat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive over­sight that was cor­rect­ed through the ju­di­cial process, stat­ing that ad­e­quate pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards should have pre­vent­ed the er­ror.

“Had one or more of these pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards been im­ple­ment­ed, the claimant’s ar­rest, de­ten­tion, and re­newed pros­e­cu­tion would have been avoid­ed or, at a min­i­mum, the er­ror would have been dis­cov­ered at an ear­li­er stage be­fore a re­newed pros­e­cu­tion on a dis­missed charge was ful­ly de­ployed,” Jus­tice Wil­son said.

She award­ed $200,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $25,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to de­ter sim­i­lar fail­ures in the fu­ture.

The judge al­so or­dered the State to pay in­ter­est on the award as well as Sama­roo’s le­gal costs.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Day­na Sama­roo (no re­la­tion), Yea­ma In­dars­ingh, and Anala Mo­han.