Court Ruling Could Open the Door for More Compensation Claims

The fallout from a recent court ruling on the 2020 state of emergency continues and now, veteran attorney Richard ‘Dickie’ Bradley is saying the implications could be far-reaching. According to Bradley, the sixteen claimants awarded compensation for unlawful detention may just be the beginning. He believes that anyone detained under a state of emergency, past or present, could be entitled to similar payouts. Bradley also dismissed the idea that a conflicting ruling from another judge should distract from what he calls a clear message: rights matter and violating them has consequences.

 

Dickie Bradley, Attorney-at-Law

“Both the PUP and the UDP have started out using state of emergency to fool people that we are fighting crime and we nuh the run no joke and we wah lock up them for more time, and lock up more of them. Anybody the talk about Bukele, that criminal from next door is looking at the wrong direction. Crime is caused because there are social and economic problems and lot of times they go together, social and economic problems. It is unfortunate that the monies the government will have to pay is so small. The smallest one is twelve thousand and most are eighteen and twenty, some twenty-five thousand. And the judge says a vindicatory damage each one will get seven thousand dollars more and their legal fees will get paid by the government. They could appeal all they want. They will lose. This is a signal to us that not because we find a lee possible solution to start violate people rights, when you start to violate rights it just grow and grow. Some people suggest you should start with six months. You are a journalist and you know what I know because they talk to you too. People that have nothing to do with gun lock up right now. Those people who are in prison right now, if the procedure is the same procedure that was under the UDP, which it likely is, all of them entitled to get a money, this one month one, if they were wrongly put together. And you know we need to change in the constitution, the governor general she is being called out and she has to say that as the law require that I am satisfied these people have, because it turns out to be a lie. You tell the GG all of them are criminals and she sign a thing and it is not true.”

Bradley also criticized the political use of SOEs, warning that both major parties have used them as a show of force rather than a real solution to crime. He says the real root of violence lies in deeper social and economic issues, and that violating rights only makes things worse.