Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man, who spent three weeks in prison af­ter he was mis­tak­en­ly held on a war­rant meant for his old­er cousin with a sim­i­lar name, is now ex­pect­ed to pur­sue a law­suit seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion from the State. 

Shiv­on El­ton Daniel Con­nell was re­leased from cus­tody af­ter Jus­tice Ni­rala Bansee-Sookhai up­held his habeas cor­pus writ chal­leng­ing the law­ful­ness of his de­ten­tion. 

Con­nell’s lawyers, Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh and Kavi­ta Moonasar, sought the court’s in­ter­ven­tion af­ter he was held on a bench war­rant in the name of “Daniel Con­nell” on April 23. 

The war­rant was re­port­ed­ly is­sued in 2009 af­ter Con­nell’s cousin missed a case man­age­ment hear­ing be­fore his tri­al for drug traf­fick­ing. 

Al­though Ma­hara­jh and Moonasar wrote to the Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice and Pris­ons, point­ing out that the wrong man had been held on the war­rant, Con­nell was not freed. 

In an af­fi­davit filed in fur­ther­ance of the case, Con­nell’s girl­friend Daniel­la Mitchell not­ed the Con­nell was born in Jan­u­ary 1994 and would have been 15 years old when the war­rant was is­sued by a judge and eight years old when the of­fence was al­leged­ly com­mit­ted in 2002.

She not­ed that Con­nell’s cousin with a sim­i­lar name, pre­vi­ous­ly lived at his Ch­agua­nas home and changed his name by Deed Poll to “Wilbert Neil Abra­ham” in Oc­to­ber 2009. 

She pro­vid­ed a statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion in which Con­nell’s cousin con­firmed the name change and that his birth­day in 1968 was list­ed on the war­rant. 

Mitchell not­ed that Con­nell was not fin­ger­print­ed or tak­en be­fore a court af­ter his ar­rest.

“I ver­i­ly be­lieve that had rea­son­able in­ves­tiga­tive steps been un­der­tak­en pri­or to the Ap­pli­cant’s ar­rest and de­ten­tion, in­clud­ing fin­ger­print com­par­i­son, ex­am­i­na­tion of prison records, re­view of his­tor­i­cal court records, age chronol­o­gy as­sess­ment and prop­er iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, it would have be­come im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent that the Ap­pli­cant was not the per­son named in the war­rant,” she said. 

She claimed that Con­nell’s fam­i­ly suf­fered as a re­sult of his ar­rest, as he is the sole bread­win­ner and has an 11-year-old child. 

“The Ap­pli­cant has suf­fered and con­tin­ues to suf­fer ex­treme dis­tress, hu­mil­i­a­tion, anx­i­ety and emo­tion­al trau­ma as a con­se­quence of his un­law­ful de­ten­tion,” she said. 

At­tor­ney Chantel Mar­tin, who rep­re­sent­ed the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, sug­gest­ed that the of­fi­cers, who ex­e­cut­ed the war­rant, did not act un­law­ful­ly. 

She claimed that they be­lieved that they had ar­rest­ed the cor­rect per­son, as Con­nell re­spond­ed to the name in the war­rant and did not raise the is­sues that were sub­se­quent­ly high­light­ed in his case. 

She claimed that the role of the po­lice end­ed af­ter Con­nell was hand­ed over to prison au­thor­i­ties. 

Jus­tice Bansee-Sookhai not­ed that it should have been ob­vi­ous that the wrong man had been held based on the in­for­ma­tion on the war­rant. 

“Based on the ev­i­dence and the sub­mis­sions, I am sat­is­fied that the bench war­rant was in­cor­rect­ly ex­e­cut­ed against Shiv­on El­ton Daniel Con­nell,” she said as she or­dered his im­me­di­ate re­lease.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Con­nell is ex­pect­ed to file a law­suit for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.