FORMER murder accused Akili Charles, the man whose litigation led to the court's historic ruling that people charged with murder can apply for bail, will be awarded the compensation that a court ordered for the breach of his rights.
Charles was shot dead in July, months before the case was heard in the Privy Council.
In a ruling on Thursday, five Law Lords said Charles was prejudiced when his preliminary inquiry had to be restarted because of the short-lived judicial appointment of former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar. In its ruling, the Privy Council overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal, which, in turn, had reversed an earlier ruling by Justice Kevin Ramcharan, who ordered that Charles should get $275,000 in compensation.
Charles and his neighbours Chicki Portillo, Kareem Gomez, Levi Joseph, Israel “Arnold” Lara and Anton Cambridge were charged with murdering Russell Antoine on May 13, 2010. The preliminary inquiry in the case went on for almost nine years and had reached an advanced stage when Ayers-Caesar took up a promotion in April 2017.
The inquiry was then put on hold while a lawsuit from the Office of the Attorney General pursued a statutory interpretation lawsuit over what procedure should be adopted in situations where judicial officers leave their office with part-heard cases still pending. In January 2019, High Court Judge Carol Gobin eventually ruled that such cases had to restart.Charles and his neighbours’ case was then restarted and completed within three months. All six men were freed of the charges by Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle, who ruled that the State failed to present sufficient evidence to sustain the charge.
Charles then pursued a separate case in which he claimed his constitutional rights to equality before the law and protection of the law were infringed by the restart of the case and consequent delay. In March 2020, Ramcharan upheld Charles’ case and ordered $150,000 in compensation, which represented the legal fees Charles incurred for the second preliminary inquiry, and $125,000 in vindicatory damages for the additional time he was made to spend in harsh remand conditions before he and his co-accused were eventually freed.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled it was wrong to find that Charles’s constitutional rights were infringed. It also held Ramcharan should not have made findings in respect of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) on the handling of the Ayers-Caesar debacle, since it was not an issue raised by Charles in his case. Lords Briggs, Kitchin, Hamblen, Burrows and Richards presided over Charles’s challenge.
In the ruling, Hamblen, who wrote the unanimous decision, repeated the words of Gobin’s judgment, which, although ruling against Charles, described the Ayers-Caesar debacle as “a colossal misstep.”Hamblen said while it was true Charles did not raise the JLSC’s role in Ayers-Caesar’s short-lived judicial appointment, it was not necessary for him to do so in a constitutional claim against the State.“The claimant do
