Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has or­dered a lit­tle over $150,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a for­mer me­dia work­er who was wrong­ly ar­rest­ed and charged by po­lice while film­ing at a crime scene.

Ak­ile Si­mon’s ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and false im­pris­on­ment case against the State was set to go to tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad at the San Fer­nan­do High Court, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

How­ev­er, when the case was called, at­tor­ney Ronelle Hinds, of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, con­ced­ed li­a­bil­i­ty in the case.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad im­me­di­ate­ly went ahead to con­sid­er the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Si­mon based on the cir­cum­stances of his case.

“It is al­ways heart­en­ing when the State does the right thing in the best in­ter­est of jus­tice. The court’s time should not be friv­o­lous­ly or un­rea­son­ably taxed by is­sues that ought not to be de­fend­ed,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Si­mon was ar­rest­ed by po­lice on Au­gust 19, 2018, while he was film­ing a crime scene at which a man was shot and killed by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer in Co­corite.

Si­mon, who was em­ployed by tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Ian Al­leyne’s Crime Watch Stu­dios, was quizzed by po­lice of­fi­cers over his pres­ence at the lo­ca­tion.

Si­mon told them he was a mem­ber of the me­dia but failed to pro­vide of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which he claimed was in his ve­hi­cle that was parked a dis­tance away.

Si­mon was ini­tial­ly told that he was loi­ter­ing but was even­tu­al­ly charged with ob­struct­ing one of the of­fi­cers in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties af­ter he was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to a po­lice sta­tion.

He spent al­most 12 hours de­tained in a hold­ing cell be­fore he was tak­en be­fore a mag­is­trate and re­leased on $10,000 own bail.

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore the mag­is­trate be­fore the charge was dis­missed af­ter the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) filed a no­tice of dis­con­tin­u­ance.

In as­sess­ing the dam­ages for Si­mon, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered $65,000 for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion as he not­ed that Si­mon’s ar­rest re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic­i­ty on so­cial and tra­di­tion­al me­dia.

He al­so or­dered $40,000 in dam­ages for false im­pris­on­ment, as he not­ed that Si­mon was forced to en­dure un­san­i­tary con­di­tions when he was de­tained.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so or­dered $45,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages to sig­ni­fy the op­pres­sive and ar­bi­trary con­duct of the of­fi­cers.

“The court thinks it nec­es­sary to note its dis­ap­proval over what tran­spired,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that the case high­light­ed a lack of re­spect for the me­dia and press free­dom.

“There is seem­ing­ly an aver­sion, es­pe­cial­ly in the realm of pub­lic op­er­a­tions to ho­n­our the tenets of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy,” he said.

“The ac­tion adopt­ed by the po­lice was not on­ly ill-ad­vised and reck­less but struck at the heart of the core de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple in re­la­tion to press free­dom and this court will not tol­er­ate the ar­bi­trary in­fer­ence with the abil­i­ty of the me­dia to dis­charge its func­tion,” he added.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Si­mon’s le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case.

Si­mon was rep­re­sent­ed by Ab­del Mo­hammed.