– for ‘malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment’

ATTORNEY-at-law Dexter Todd is expected to file a $100M lawsuit against the State for the wrongful imprisonment of a 32-year-old Ramos Street, Plaisance, East Coast Demerara man, who was last week freed from a murder charge after being on remand for the last seven years.

The lawsuit will be filed today at the Demerara High Court on behalf of Cloyde Harris, who was freed of the murder charge last Friday by Magistrate Alex Moore due to there being insufficient evidence to bring him in guilty.

Harris, who was freed at the Sparendaam Magistrates’ Court, where the Preliminary Inquiry (PI) was done, had been charged for the December 22, 2012 murder of his cousin, Derrick Cox, 71, a shopkeeper, at the same Ramos Street, Plaisance, where he’d lived before being incarcerated at the Camp Street Prison, where he’d been on remand for the capital offence.
Cox, called ‘Backatoo’, was reportedly shot in the chest at around 22:50hrs on the day in question by bandits outside his shop, though eyewitnesses would claim they saw Harris running away from the scene of the crime, but change their story when they testified in court.

Back in October 2013, Magistrate Moore had committed Harris to stand trial at the High Court, but owing to the negligence of the Clerk of Court attached to the Vigilance Magistrates Court, who was supposed to submit the case jacket and deposition to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) but never did, the matter was stalled.

Then in 2016, after some amount of pressure was brought to bear on the relevant authorities, the documents were finally submitted to the DPP, who subsequently wrote advising Magistrate Moore to reopen the PI, since one of the exhibits had not been properly identified.

On December 27, 2018, when the PI was reopened, Harris retained the services of Todd, who seized the opportunity to re-examine the witnesses as well as the evidence. And what he found was that the main witness had never testified, and when the case was finally put to him, he recanted, saying that he was mistaken; that he never saw Harris at the crime scene at all.

At the last hearing, which was held last Friday, Magistrate Moore dismissed the matter against Harris, and told him he was free to go.

This being the case, Todd, as directed by his client, will be suing the State for $100M for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment.

Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Monday, Harris said that since his release, all he’s done is clean his room, which he has not seen in the last seven years.
“I can’t even walk in my house,” he said. “My village looking small-small; everything just strange.” And, making the transition from being behind bars and sleeping in his own bed has been quite a task as well.

But even harder still is getting used to the stares, and being the subject of the village gossip mill.

“Everybody look at you different when you get charge for murder. From the time you pass that prison gate, whether you’re guilty or not, society does look at you different,” Harris said.