Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man who served a 20-year sen­tence for co­caine traf­fick­ing has been award­ed $150,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for de­lays in con­sid­er­ing his ap­pli­ca­tions for a pres­i­den­tial par­don.

High Court Judge West­min James or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion last Fri­day, up­hold­ing Uraz Mo­hammed’s con­sti­tu­tion­al claim over the de­lays.

In No­vem­ber 2011, Mo­hammed was con­vict­ed of the of­fence and sen­tenced to 25 years in prison. The Court of Ap­peal up­held his con­vic­tion but re­duced his sen­tence.

Be­tween 2017 and 2021, Mo­hammed sub­mit­ted three ap­pli­ca­tions to the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the Pow­er of Par­don, al­so known as the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee.

In his ap­pli­ca­tions, Mo­hammed said prison of­fi­cials had de­scribed him as a “mod­el pris­on­er” and that he had served as an in­fir­mary or­der­ly. He al­so said he had suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed nu­mer­ous re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes and was ready to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety.

The com­mit­tee ac­knowl­edged his ap­pli­ca­tions but did not con­sid­er them be­fore he com­plet­ed his sen­tence, with re­mis­sion, in March last year.

Mo­hammed, through lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, filed the case, al­leg­ing that the de­lays breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. He ar­gued that he could have been re­leased be­fore com­plet­ing his sen­tence if his ap­pli­ca­tions had been con­sid­ered.

Mo­hammed al­so chal­lenged the com­mit­tee’s com­po­si­tion and its fail­ure to es­tab­lish clear cri­te­ria for grant­i­ng a pres­i­den­tial par­don.

The com­mit­tee de­nied any wrong­do­ing. It said there was a sig­nif­i­cant back­log of cas­es and that mat­ters were not dealt with in a strict­ly nu­mer­i­cal or chrono­log­i­cal or­der.

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice James re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment that Mo­hammed’s law­suit had be­come aca­d­e­m­ic af­ter his re­lease from prison, not­ing that a par­don could still be grant­ed.

Jus­tice James said that while the Con­sti­tu­tion does not pre­scribe a fixed pe­ri­od for de­cid­ing mer­cy pe­ti­tions, they must be con­sid­ered with­in a rea­son­able time.

“The ab­sence of a dead­line does not, how­ev­er, au­tho­rise the State to leave an ac­cept­ed pe­ti­tion in­def­i­nite­ly with­out ef­fec­tive pro­gres­sion,” Jus­tice James said.

He crit­i­cised the com­mit­tee for fail­ing to up­date Mo­hammed on his ap­pli­ca­tions, forc­ing him to pur­sue dis­clo­sure re­quests un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

“Such pro­longed ad­min­is­tra­tive si­lence is dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of good pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

Jus­tice James al­so not­ed that oth­er pris­on­ers ap­ply­ing for par­dons had ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar de­lays.

“This is not a com­plaint about a sin­gle pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty or an iso­lat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive over­sight,” he said.

Find­ing the de­lays un­rea­son­able and fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair, Jus­tice James said: “It caused re­al and sub­stan­tial prej­u­dice through pro­longed un­cer­tain­ty and the loss of ef­fec­tive use of the process while ear­li­er re­lease re­mained pos­si­ble.”

While up­hold­ing Mo­hammed’s chal­lenge over the de­lays, Jus­tice James re­ject­ed his claims con­cern­ing the com­mit­tee’s fail­ure to set par­don cri­te­ria, not­ing that ex­ec­u­tive clemen­cy re­quires flex­i­bil­i­ty.

“Ap­pli­ca­tions may in­volve ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent con­sid­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the na­ture and se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence, con­duct dur­ing in­car­cer­a­tion, ev­i­dence of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, hu­man­i­tar­i­an cir­cum­stances, pub­lic safe­ty and the wider pub­lic in­ter­est,” he said.

Jus­tice James al­so re­ject­ed Mo­hammed’s chal­lenge to the com­mit­tee’s com­po­si­tion, which was based on one mem­ber serv­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly from 1976 to 2022. He found no ev­i­dence of in­ca­pac­i­ty, bias or im­prop­er mo­tive, and not­ed that the Con­sti­tu­tion did not set a max­i­mum term.

Jus­tice James ruled that Mo­hammed should re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion and de­c­la­ra­tions that his rights had been breached.

“An award of com­pen­sa­tion is jus­ti­fied for the dis­tress, frus­tra­tion, and loss of ef­fec­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al process there­by oc­ca­sioned,” he said.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Mo­hammed’s le­gal costs.

Mo­hammed was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jodie Black­stock, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram and Ganesh Sa­roop.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Vanes­sa Gopaul, Mary Davis, Evan­na Welch, Di­an­na Singh and Sara Mus­lim.