The attorney who represented former murder accused Frank Errol Gibson says the State should not appeal the High Court decision that awarded him $1.8 million for the decade he spent on remand.
But if the State does appeal, said King’s Counsel Larry Smith, it could send a message “about the State’s willingness to go for the jugular of a poor, innocent, black man who has endured great suffering at the State’s own hands”.
It was last Thursday that Justice Pamela Beckles awarded Gibson more than $1.8 million in a case where the Attorney General conceded there were “significant breaches” to Gibson’s constitutional rights.
The judge had declared the strength of the criminal justice system depended on its ability to convict the guilty and release the innocent. She found that if the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions had acted promptly, having received exculpatory evidence six months into Gibson’s time on remand, he would not have spent ten years at Dodds Prison. (HLE)
