Robbery accused to sue state over malicious prosecution

Mar 06, 2018 News

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A young businessman who had his life disrupted and his investments go down the drain after he was accused of two counts of armed robberies and felonious wounding is moving to take private legal actions against the investigating rank for malicious prosecution and the state for damages.
Samuel Adams, a father of one, in March 2017, was arrested, investigated and charged with the offences committed in December 2016 in front of the Ministry of Finance on Main Street where a man was robbed of some $3 million and shot in the process.
Speaking with attorney, Dexter Todd who is representing Adams’ interest, said that his client decided to take the step after considering the grave embarrassment to himself and family and the loss of his investments including a start-up business he operated at the time he was picked up for the crimes.
On February 19, 2018 after almost one year of court proceedings, Magistrate Judy Latchman dismissed the matter for want of prosecution.
According to the attorney, the court found that an oral statement, the only thing on which the prosecution was relying, was unreliable. The prosecution sought to make the court believe that during interrogation, Adams told detectives that he had something to do with the robbery.
The prosecution also sought to give the court the impression that Adams also gave the police a statement to this effect but refused to sign it.
The statement suggested that his lawyer told him that he should tell the police the truth but should not sign the statement. Todd regarded those claims by the prosecuting as erroneous, questioning, which lawyer would sanely advise his or her client to incriminate him or herself.
The lawyer, said that his client’s approach to the Supreme Court to recover costs, be compensated for damages and also seek to bring private proceedings against the investigating rank in the particular case, was largely due to the fact that since he was arrested last year March, his entire life has crumbled.
He has now moved from being a young businessman to working as a chauffeur.
In March last year, while a at his businessman place, an individual came to have a service provided and requested to borrow Adams’s car until the businessman was finish working on the customer’s car.
Adams told detectives and his lawyer that after time elapsed he realised that the man who was known to him had not returned with his vehicle. He said that he subsequently called to enquire about the whereabouts of his vehicle.
It is then that he learnt that the man was in police custody and the car impounded for a robbery committed three months prior on December 2016.
Adams went down to the Brickdam Police Station to enquire about his vehicle and he was promptly arrested and detained for 12 days because the police continuously sought and secured extensions for his detention.
Samuel Adams claimed that while in custody, two named detectives kept grilling him about the robbery and other related matters, all new and strange to him and on each occasion, he reportedly claimed ignorance of what he was being asked about.
It was at some point during that interrogation, according to Adams, that a police sergeant told him that since he was trying to play difficult “We gon leh you hold these two charges”. He was slapped with the offences for which he was placed before the court.
As is customary, Adams was remanded on his first appearance for the offence because of its gravity. He was further remanded on his next appearance, which prompted his lawyer to move to the High Court and secure bail.
That however proved a challenge for the young man because after the High Court granted him bail, his family could not immediately secure the money to have him released into their custody.
He remained incarcerated for a prolonged period until relatives eventually sold off certain items they owned to come up with the money to secure his pre-trial liberty.
Adams was required to post $1 million bail for the two counts of armed robberies and felonious wounding charges, which the police laid on him.
While on remand, the place he rented to do his business was taken back from him. His relatives had to remove his belongings from that premises.
A vehicle for which he was paying an auto dealer was also handed back to them by the police.
Attorney Dexter Todd questioned the latter development in court citing confirmation that the police trumped up charges for the young man.
He said that had the vehicle been indeed involved in a robbery, the police would not have handed it back to the auto dealer. He said that even if it were a state, where they had to do so; they could have photographed the vehicle and presented the photos to the court as evidence, something that they never did.

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