Derek Achong

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Fac­ul­ty of Law’s Hu­man Rights Clin­ic is spear­head­ing a land­mark case seek­ing ex­pe­dit­ed tri­als and spe­cial bail for re­mand pris­on­ers who have been await­ing tri­al for more than five years for mur­der.

In the law­suit, which was filed ear­li­er this month and an­nounced yes­ter­day, the clin­ic high­light­ed the cas­es of sev­en peo­ple who have been await­ing tri­al for mur­der for up to 18 years.

In the fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group is claim­ing that their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and to lib­er­ty ex­cept by due process of law, are be­ing in­fringed by the on­go­ing pro­tract­ed state of their re­spec­tive cas­es. They are al­so con­tend­ing that be­ing forced to en­dure the in­hu­mane con­di­tions of lo­cal re­mand pris­ons for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods con­sti­tutes cru­el and un­usu­al treat­ment.

“The claimants main­tain, in those cir­cum­stances, even where a statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion de­nies the claimants ac­cess to bail on a charge of mur­der al­low­ing for their in­car­cer­a­tion un­til tri­al, the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees man­date that the State try the claimant with­in a rea­son­able time and, where the court finds a breach, the court is em­pow­ered un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion to craft a rem­e­dy of con­sti­tu­tion­al bail and to make or­ders for ex­pe­dit­ed tri­al to­geth­er with at­ten­dant or­ders it sees fit,” their lawyers said.

In an af­fi­davit at­tached to the case, at­tor­ney Joseph Cowles sought to give in­for­ma­tion on the claimants—An­tho­ny Al­bert, Bruce Hen­ry, Ram­daye Ram­lal, Ka­reem Ram­lal, Hy­acinth Loubon, Sasha Seep­er­sad and Malai­ka St Louis.

Ac­cord­ing to Cowles, Al­bert and Hen­ry have been await­ing tri­al for al­most 18 years; the Ram­lals and Loubon for 14 years and it is be­tween sev­en and eight years for Seep­er­sad and St Louis.

Cowles claimed their ou­s­tand­ing tri­als were de­layed due to mul­ti­ple is­sues, in­clud­ing lengthy pre­lim­i­nary in­quires, de­lays in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) fil­ing in­dict­ments af­ter pre­lim­i­nary in­quires, le­gal aid at­tor­neys with­draw­ing from cas­es and the back­log of cas­es with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“None of the claimant’s cas­es are com­plex in na­ture, in­volve oner­ous ev­i­dence, re­ly on sub­stan­tial wit­ness­es or in­volve tech­ni­cal points of law. There is noth­ing par­tic­u­lar or un­usu­al in any of the claimants’ cas­es which war­rant de­lay,” Cowles said.

Cowles al­so briefly out­lined is­sues with the re­mand fa­cil­i­ties at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca, where the group is de­tained. He not­ed that there is over­crowd­ing, lim­it­ed san­i­ta­tion and recre­ation fa­cil­i­ties, in­suf­fi­cient food and drink­ing wa­ter and a lack of toi­let fa­cil­i­ties in cells.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the clin­ic stat­ed that the law­suit was a re­sult of a part­ner­ship with the Eu­ro­pean Union and had a fo­cus on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence case.

“This is an on­go­ing trav­es­ty in our democ­ra­cy, where per­sons are charged and left to lan­guish in jail, in harsh, some­times in­hu­mane con­di­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly now with the COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment, with­out get­ting an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard and de­fend them­selves in court,” the fac­ul­ty’s Dean, Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, said.

She al­so not­ed that when the clin­ic de­liv­ered a pre­sen­ta­tion be­fore the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion of Hu­man Rights (IACHR) last year, it not­ed that this coun­try has the largest re­mand pop­u­la­tion in the re­gion with in­di­vid­u­als al­so wait­ing the longest to face tri­al.

“The sys­tem needs to change. The State, pri­vate at­tor­neys and the courts all have a part to play in find­ing work­able mech­a­nisms to cor­rect this in­jus­tice,” she said.

The group is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Delzin, Di­anne Mano, Melis­sa Mano and Rafiya Karim, all of Trin­i­ty Cham­bers. The case has been as­signed to Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, who is yet to set a date for the first hear­ing.