Supreme Court judge Justice Sonya Wint-Blair, who last month ordered that the State pay $120 million to George Williams, the man who spent 50 years in prison — 42 without a review — for breaching his rights to liberty, says the Circuit Court should have used its powers to “ensure his return to court” for periodic reviews to see whether he had recovered enough to be fit to plead and stand trial as required by law.

Williams, a diagnosed schizophrenic, was arrested on October 28, 1970 and charged with the murder of Ian Laurie in July that year. Upon his arraignment on March 25, 1971, the issue of his fitness to plead was heard by a jury, which found him unfit to plead. The order of the court was that Williams be kept in strict custody until the pleasure of the governor general was known.

Williams, according to the facts found by the court, was first committed to and was being properly housed and treated at Bellevue Hospital as prescribed by law. He, however, escaped in 1972 and was recaptured by the police and housed at the then St Catherine District Prison, where he would appear before the St Catherine Circuit Court.

According to court records, each time he was returned to the prison it was on remand by court order. However, there was no evidence that he was ever taken back to court after May 25, 1978 or that a letter from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions then, asking that his status be reviewed as he should rightly be placed at Bellevue, was acted upon.

Williams was released from prison on July 24, 2020, by a St Catherine Circuit Court judge following the entry of a nolle prosequi by the present director of public prosecutions.

According to Justice Wint-Blair in her written judgment following her ruling last month, the court could have acted.

“Notwithstanding that a defendant is detained at the court’s pleasure, there is nothing to preclude re-entry of such a person before the court as the court deems fit. In that vein, the court must fashion its own schedule for review, taking account of whether an accused was tried and convicted but found to be insane or suffering from diminished responsibility, or whether he was merely detained after being found to be unfit to plead,” the jurist stated.

“All of this means that in the case of Mr Williams, this mechanism ought to have been employed to ensure his return to court, as this power set down in the Criminal Justice (Administration) Act was always available to the Circuit Court. The defendant cannot successfully contend that this could be otherwise. There is a clear breach of the claimant’s liberty rights, in that there is no evidence that he was taken to court for periodic reviews after 1978,” she said further.

Continuing, Justice Wint-Blair pointed out that “periodic reviews are required by law in order for a court to decide whether the mental health of a defendant detained in custody has improved such that he might be fit to stand trial”.

“The law provides for a general system of checks and balances for the regular monitoring of detainees to ensure that relevant information as to their mental and physical condition is brought to the attention of the court as well as the minister in a timely fashion. The minister is entitled to rely on the medical officers to fulfil their duties and to inform him of that which is relevant with respect to the prison population. There came a point at which the claimant was no longer taken to court. The failure to conduct periodic reviews of the criminal case of the claimant is a conceded breach of the right to liberty,” she said further.

“The absence of such reviews was brought about by the failure to operate the correct legal regime in the first place,” Justice Wint-Blair said.

“It is significant that the legal regime for the treatment of Mr Williams as a mentally disordered defendant, found unfit to stand trial, was not brought properly into operation at all for several reasons. There is a clear statutory requirement that his progress and development in custody should have been periodically reviewed by a judge so that a determination could be made when it would be appropriate to return him to court for his trial. Also, whether having regard to the safety of the public and the welfare of the defendant, he could be released,” Justice Wint-Blair added.

She, however, noted that it was, at the same time, “plain” that the court did not order the return of Williams to Bellevue Hospital [before the wing housing mentally disordered defendants closed down] as he was obviously “capable of escaping from Bellevue”.

She pointed out that notwithstanding a statutory duty on the part of the medical officer to report the presence of Williams in the prison to the minister by way of medical certificate, “there is no such evidence”.

“That the claimant was unlawfully detained in prison is not simply a matter of detention in the wrong physical location. It also involved a failure to ensure that the legal regime directed specifically to providing the care and treatment in custody of the claimant’s mental disorder was put in place, and there is no evidence that it was. There is also no evidence of a periodic review of his case by a court to determine the basis for his continued detention,” she noted.

She said Williams’ liberty rights were engaged when he was removed from the gaol delivery list and breached when he came to the notice of Crown counsel and the commissioner of corrections, but despite their instructions, remained in prison without periodic review.

In the meantime, Williams, who was represented by attorney John Clarke, in his evidence said he had been intellectually challenged since he was a little boy and used to see the “head doctor” from as far back as he could recall.

Williams — in an affidavit declaring that no State organ had taken any active steps since 1975 to prosecute his matter, to ascertain if the purported witness was still alive, or to determine whether there was a viable prosecution — said he had seen multiple murder convicts serve their time and return to society while he sat in prison. He said he received no sustained psychiatric treatment during his incarceration and complained that whenever he pointed out that he was not convicted, he was dismissed by warders and authorities as a ‘madman’.

According to Williams, he was called “a mad case by the warders and belonged to the lowest class of prisoners”. He said “the gays received better treatment” than him and also said he was routinely beaten and abused.

Williams also said he was “deprived of sex”, was essentially in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, seven days a week, on lockdown and had no furniture except for a sheet of foam which was his bed for the last 50 years. According to Williams he, however, slept on the ground more often as it was “better than the foam”.

Justice Wint-Blair, in declaring that “the manner of detaining George Williams, a person with a mental disorder, breached his rights to liberty, to which he is entitled by virtue of his being a citizen of a free and democratic society” ordered that Williams, now 76 years of age, receive $42 million for vindicatory damages and close to $79 million for compensatory damages.

“It is hereby declared by this court that the failure of the material State organs to conduct periodic reviews of George Williams’ incarceration to determine whether he had recovered his mental health so as to be fit to plead and stand his trial was in breach of his rights to liberty, to due process and his right to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court within a reasonable time,” she said.

Williams’ case surfaced in 2020 following national outcry over the death of 81-year-old Noel Chambers, who had been in custody for 40 years without trial and who was found dead in his cell, emaciated and covered in insects.