Derek Achong

For­mer mur­der ac­cused Ak­ili Charles has con­tin­ued to score le­gal vic­to­ries de­spite be­ing mur­dered al­most four months ago.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil up­held a High Court Judge’s de­ci­sion to award him $275,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for his pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry hav­ing to be restart­ed due to the con­tro­ver­sial short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, 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.

An­toine, 27, was walk­ing along Up­per Ceme­tery Street, Diego Mar­tin, when he was shot sev­er­al times. An­toine’s friends, Mar­cus and Joseph Spring, were wound­ed in the in­ci­dent and the group was al­so charged with shoot­ing them with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm.

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in the case went on for al­most nine years and reached an ad­vanced stage when Ay­ers-Cae­sar took up the pro­mo­tion in April 2017.

The in­quiry was put on hold while the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Charles 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 four months.

All six men were freed of the charges, as Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle 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 the cor­re­spond­ing de­lay.

In March 2020, Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran up­held Charles’ case as he or­dered $150,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, which rep­re­sents the le­gal fees Charles in­curred for the sec­ond pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, and $125,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages for the ad­di­tion­al time he was forced to spend in harsh re­mand con­di­tions be­fore he and his co-ac­cused were even­tu­al­ly freed.

In over­turn­ing Ram­cha­ran’s judg­ment last year, the Court of Ap­peal ruled he was wrong to rule that Charles’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed.

It al­so ruled that Ram­cha­ran should not have made find­ings in re­gard to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s (JLSC) han­dling of the Ay­ers-Cae­sar fi­as­co, as there was no le­gal or fac­tu­al ba­sis for do­ing so based on the case filed by Charles.

In de­cid­ing the ap­peal, Lord Nicholas Ham­blen, who wrote the judg­ment which his four col­leagues agreed with, said Charles was not re­quired to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic con­duct from the JLSC to suc­ceed in his con­sti­tu­tion­al case.

“The claimant does not have to as­sert that a spe­cif­ic State body, or that in­di­vid­u­als with­in such a body, are re­spon­si­ble for the breach of his or her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. What mat­ters is es­tab­lish­ing that the State is so re­spon­si­ble,” Lord Ham­blen said.

Turn­ing to whether Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran was right to rule that Charles had a right to pro­tec­tion of the law un­der Sec­tion 4(b) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, Lord Ham­blen not­ed that no ev­i­dence was pre­sent­ed pro­vid­ing a ra­tio­nal ex­pla­na­tion for al­low­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar to take up the ap­point­ment with the part-heard cas­es still pend­ing.

“In all the cir­cum­stances, the Board con­sid­ers that it is jus­ti­fi­able to con­clude that the “colos­sal mis­step” was ir­ra­tional and un­rea­son­able, al­though the Board would ac­cept that that does not mean that it was ar­bi­trary,” Lord Ham­blen said, as he not­ed it was a fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair ex­er­cise of pow­er.

He al­so not­ed that the se­ri­ous prej­u­dice suf­fered by Charles was clear and prop­er­ly iden­ti­fied by Jus­tice Gob­in and Ram­cha­ran.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Lord Ham­blen al­so re­ject­ed claims from the State that the fees charged by Charles’ lawyer, Wayne Sturge, for the sec­ond pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry were un­rea­son­able, as it was com­plet­ed with­in months.

“There is noth­ing un­usu­al about a brief fee be­ing agreed for a hear­ing which re­mains the fee payable, whether the hear­ing goes on long or short,” Lord Ham­blen said.

He not­ed that Sturge had tem­porar­i­ly waived his fees pend­ing the out­come of the case and would now be paid by Charles’ fam­i­ly us­ing the com­pen­sa­tion.

The out­come of the case was not the on­ly le­gal vic­to­ry claimed by Charles this year.

In late Ju­ly, the Privy Coun­cil up­held his con­sti­tu­tion­al case over the abil­i­ty of judges to con­sid­er bail for peo­ple charged with mur­der. The case set a ma­jor le­gal prece­dent, as all peo­ple charged with the cap­i­tal of­fence were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly de­nied bail un­der the Bail Act for decades.

Charles was shot dead out­side his home at Covi­gne Road, Diego Mar­tin, with­in days of the judge­ment in that case.

Charles was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Rowan Pen­ning­ton-Ben­ton, Adam Ri­ley and Ganesh Sa­roop.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Knox, KC, and Daniel Gold­blatt.