VINDICATED: Supreme Court rules in favour of Jamaican national Matthew Sewell

Sewell seeking $27 million in damages 

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A Supreme Court judge has ruled in favor of Jamaican national Matthew Sewell after years of a legal battle with the government over his false imprisonment.

Sewell was first arrested in June 2006 at the age of 18 after being accused of raping a six-year-old girl. He had been granted three weeks stay in The Bahamas to visit his father.

He was subsequently arrested five more times on different charges and detained at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre on the grounds that he was in the country illegally.

For more than nine years he was imprisoned and detained on and off without facing a hearing on charges of sexual assault, housebreaking and murder.

He is suing the government for damages pertaining to false imprisonment, assault and battery, malicious prosecution, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and breaches of his fundamental rights under the Constitution.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bowe-Darville yesterday struck out the defense filed by the government respondents and gave judgment to Sewell for all of the claims set out in his writ.

In her ruling, Justice Bowe-Darville pointed to the submissions made by Sewell’s legal representatives, presenting multiple similar cases in The Bahamas.

She quoted that “despite repeated judicial pronouncements and educational expositions of what the law is in the nation to police immigration powers of arrest and detention, the defendants, their servants and/or agents continue to brazenly flout the fundamental rights and freedoms of Chapter 3 of the constitution with impunity and without executive extension”.

Sewell is asking the court to be awarded $27,533,7000 along with special damages.

The court is expected to hear submissions on quantum on October 28, at 10am.

The Jamaican national’s attorney, Fred Smith, QC, described the ruling as “vindication” for his client.

“It’s very disconcerting as a human rights advocate and as a lawyer who believes in the rule of law and fights for that for every person in The Bahamas, that despite dozens and dozens of rulings by the Supreme Court, the executive branch of government continues to make the same mistakes,” Smith said.

“Our position before the judge was that these are intentional. It is a systemic and ubiquitous institutionalized disregard for the rule of law in The Bahamas and a very loud and very clear message needs to be sent out to the executive branch of government by the judiciary that has for decades been very reasonable and being very deliberate and educational in trying to teach the executive branch that civil crime does not pay, to try and curtail the excess of the police and the immigration authorities, but that simply has not happened.”

Smith said over the nine years and nine months in and out of jail, courts, and the detention center, Sewell has had his eye nearly gouged out with a pen, his nose broken, and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from the conditions in which he was held in Fox Hill.

He said his client has also been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has “terrible trouble reintegrating with society”.

“I call them civil crimes against his human rights at that time,” Smith said.

After being subsequently released on bail after his first arrest in April 2008, Sewell was arrested again in 2009 with the alleged rape of a girlfriend.

He was left to languish in prison without trial until August 2013 when that case was dismissed.

He was then arrested on October 2 and rearrested on October 9 for house-breaking and murder allegations.

After all charges against him had been dropped, he was later transferred to the Carmichael Road Detention Centre on the grounds that he was in the country illegally.

Sewell was once again arrested in January 2016 and charged with two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse.

A nolle prosequi entered in July 2017 triggered his subsequent release.