The Supreme Court docket has ordered the Authorities of Jamaica to pay greater than $120 million in damages to George Williams, a mentally in poor health man who spent 50 years in custody with out ever going through trial.
In a ruling delivered Thursday, Justice Sonya Wint-Blair awarded $78.6 million in compensatory damages and $42 million in vindicatory damages to Williams, whose decades-long detention was described as a gross violation of his constitutional rights. The judgment stems from a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit filed by his lawyer, John Clarke.
The Authorities had initially supplied $6 million in compensation, however the supply was rejected by Williams’ household.
Justice Wint-Blair discovered that Williams’ proper to due course of and a good listening to inside an affordable time had been severely breached. The court docket additionally dominated that the state’s failure to conduct periodic psychological well being evaluations to find out his health for trial amounted to a violation of his proper to liberty in a democratic society.
Williams, a Rastafarian, was arrested on December 29, 1970, and charged with the homicide of Ian Laurie, allegedly dedicated earlier that yr. Nonetheless, he was deemed unfit to plead and held “on the court docket’s pleasure” — successfully imprisoning him indefinitely with out trial.
His case gained nationwide consideration in 2020 after the Unbiased Fee of Investigations (INDECOM) launched a report exposing the extended incarceration of mentally in poor health detainees. The report revealed that Williams was considered one of seven males who had every spent a minimum of 40 years behind bars awaiting trial.
Amongst them was Noel Chambers, one other Rastafarian, who died in 2020 on the age of 81 after 4 many years in custody. The INDECOM report described his physique as emaciated and coated with bedsores, vermin bites, and reside bedbugs.
The court docket’s judgment marks a landmark choice in Jamaica’s authorized and human rights historical past and raises critical questions concerning the therapy of mentally in poor health people within the justice system.
