A High Court Judge has or­dered a lit­tle over $90,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to two men, who were beat­en by prison of­fi­cers dur­ing a ri­ot at the Gold­en Grove State Prison in Arou­ca.

In a re­cent judg­ment, Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed up­held as­sault and bat­tery law­suits brought by Paul Williams and Mark Mar­shall against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The law­suit re­lat­ed to an in­ci­dent at the prison on March 17, 2020.

Williams said he was at­tempt­ing to re­turn to his cell af­ter his dai­ly air­ing when he heard a com­mo­tion and no­ticed fel­low pris­on­ers burn­ing mat­tress­es.

He claimed that he tried to hide in the bath­room area with some oth­er in­mates, but they were con­front­ed by a group of prison of­fi­cers, who ac­cused them of be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the dis­tur­bance.

Williams said one of­fi­cer beat him with a ba­ton be­fore re­strain­ing his hands with a tie-strap.

He al­leged that al­though he re­quest­ed to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment, the re­quest was on­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed al­most two weeks lat­er.

Mar­shall claimed that he was sleep­ing in his cell when the ri­ot be­gan.

He said he went to the bath­room area as he could not breathe prop­er­ly due to the smoke from the burn­ing mat­tress­es.

Mar­shall claimed that he was beat­en along­side Williams and suf­fered a frac­tured nose and a dis­lo­cat­ed hand.

Mar­shall was on­ly tak­en for med­ical treat­ment af­ter his lawyers, Mario Mer­ritt and Keishel Grant, threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er’s re­fusal to fa­cil­i­tate such.

In re­sponse to the law­suit, the AG’s Of­fice de­nied any knowl­edge of the duo’s claims as it con­tend­ed that they failed to iden­ti­fy the prison of­fi­cers who at­tacked them.

In de­cid­ing the duo’s cas­es, Jus­tice Mo­hammed held that she be­lieved their con­sis­tent claims over what tran­spired.

“Their ev­i­dence was un­shak­en in cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, and there was no ev­i­dence from the De­fen­dant to con­tra­dict that case of Mr Williams and Mr Mar­shall,” she said.

She al­so point­ed out that there was no ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the State to claim that the of­fi­cers used rea­son­able force in the sit­u­a­tion.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $30,000 in dam­ages for Williams and $20,000 for Mar­shall, which was based on the ex­tent of their in­juries, which did not re­sult in per­ma­nent par­tial dis­abil­i­ty.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so or­dered $10,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages for each of the men based on the con­duct of the of­fi­cers.

“The prison of­fi­cers are em­ployed to per­form a pub­lic func­tion to re­ha­bil­i­tate of­fend­ers and to main­tain con­trol of in­mates in the prison un­der safe, se­cure and hu­mane con­di­tions,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

“How­ev­er, in the in­stant case, the prison of­fi­cers failed to com­ply with the writ­ten in­struc­tions of the Prison Med­ical Of­fi­cer to con­vey Mr Williams and Mr Mar­shall to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex for med­ical treat­ment un­til the mat­ter was brought to the at­ten­tion of the court,” she added.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay the duo’s le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the lit­i­ga­tion.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Mary Davis and Nairob Smart.