State ordered to pay over $1.8M

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A de­ci­sion to trans­fer six men on re­mand to a di­lap­i­dat­ed and over­crowd­ed build­ing at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca is set to cost the State more than $1.8 mil­lion.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered last week, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held the men’s claims chal­leng­ing their trans­fer and the con­di­tions in which they were de­tained.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad award­ed each man be­tween $248,000 and $374,500 in com­pen­sa­tion, based on the length of time he spent in the build­ing be­fore be­ing trans­ferred. One of the men, Ste­fon Austin, died in cus­tody while the case was pend­ing. His moth­er was sub­sti­tut­ed as a claimant and will re­ceive his com­pen­sa­tion.

On Ju­ly 24, 2021, Austin, Ayok­ie Charles, Ker­ry Valenti­no, Brent John­son, Joshua Janet and Dar­rel Dias were trans­ferred to the Wayne Jack­son Build­ing, al­so known as Build­ing 13, at the prison.

Through their at­tor­neys, led by Vin­cent Pat­ter­son, the men claimed they were sub­ject­ed to in­hu­mane con­di­tions, in­clud­ing be­ing de­nied med­ical care.

They were re­lo­cat­ed on dif­fer­ent dates be­tween De­cem­ber 2022 and April 2023. All ex­cept Austin re­main on re­mand in prison while await­ing tri­al.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad had to de­cide whether the trans­fer was an ir­reg­u­lar and im­prop­er ex­er­cise of the then-Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er’s dis­cre­tion un­der the Prison Act to move pris­on­ers be­tween fa­cil­i­ties.

The judge not­ed that the then-Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er had re­fused to dis­close his rea­sons for trans­fer­ring the men, cit­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

A blan­ket as­ser­tion that the com­mis­sion­er had act­ed prop­er­ly did not help the court de­cide the is­sue, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said.

“The court is there­fore left with­out any ev­i­den­tial foun­da­tion up­on which it could con­clude that the con­sid­er­a­tions ad­vanced by the claimants were weighed, or that the de­ci­sion struck a bal­ance that was ra­tio­nal­ly open to the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er,” he said.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so up­held the men’s com­plaints about the con­di­tions they en­dured, part­ly be­cause the Prison Ser­vice had not ful­ly re­spond­ed to their al­le­ga­tions.

“The ev­i­dence ad­vanced on be­half of the de­fen­dant, con­fined as it is to the lat­er med­ical treat­ment of three of the six claimants, does not en­gage with the con­di­tions in Build­ing 13, and there was no ev­i­dence be­fore the court deny­ing the leak­age of sew­er­age, the over­crowd­ing, the fail­ure of the ven­ti­la­tion, the con­stant light­ing, or the ab­sence of potable wa­ter,” he said.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad found that the con­di­tions amount­ed to cru­el and un­usu­al treat­ment, in breach of the men’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“They went well be­yond the harsh­ness that is the in­evitable in­ci­dent of law­ful in­car­cer­a­tion,” he said.

“To re­quire hu­mans to sleep on a floor across which hu­man sew­er­age has leaked, in an over­crowd­ed and un­ven­ti­lat­ed space, de­prived of clean drink­ing wa­ter and of rest, and sur­round­ed by the pres­ence of their own and oth­ers’ waste, is to sub­ject them to con­di­tions that dis­re­gard the in­her­ent dig­ni­ty of the per­son,” he added.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad set com­pen­sa­tion at $250 a day for the time each man was held in Build­ing 13. He or­dered ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion for Charles, John­son and Dias, who suc­cess­ful­ly claimed that they had been as­sault­ed by prison of­fi­cers be­fore be­ing trans­ferred.

He al­so award­ed each man $150,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages for the breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“The sum is not scaled to the pe­ri­od each claimant spent in Build­ing 13, be­cause the vin­di­ca­to­ry el­e­ment does not re­spond to the du­ra­tion of an in­di­vid­ual’s suf­fer­ing; it re­sponds to the val­ue of the right and to the con­duct of the State, which is the same in the case of each of these six men,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said.

The ad­di­tion­al award was part­ly based on the State’s po­si­tion in re­spond­ing to the law­suit.

“That dis­clos­es an in­sti­tu­tion­al pos­ture in which the State does not re­gard it­self as oblig­ed to ac­count to this court for the man­ner in which it holds men whom it has con­vict­ed of noth­ing,” he said.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay the men’s le­gal costs.

The men were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Joshua Ham­let and Nic­hole De Ver­teuil-Milne. The Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al were rep­re­sent­ed by Mon­i­ca Smith and Savi Ramhit.