‘Deceptive and dishonest’ – Jamaica Observer

Environment Commissioner Nicholas Gordon has filed a claim in the High Court seeking damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

An environmental inspector who was released from murder charges in June this year after the Crown’s case against him collapsed due to inconsistencies in the testimony of the only witness has filed a claim in the High Court seeking damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

Nicholas Gordon, 31, who was an employee of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, has named Corporal Ozel Stewart, who is assigned to the Denham Town Police Station, and the Attorney General of Jamaica as defendants in the lawsuit.

Gordon was arrested and charged with murder in connection with the 2016 killing of Stay Alive’s Michael Britton, of Bling Bigs, after the only key witness claimed Britton made a dying statement naming Gordon as the shooter as she transported him inside . a taxi to Kingston Public Hospital.

However, Gordon’s lawyer, Anthony Williams, had argued during the trial that the witness’ statement implicating his client “as the alleged attacker was false, misleading, deceptive, untrue and dishonest.”

“No such so-called dying declaration was ever made by the deceased at all as stated in her first witness statement… which she gave to the Denham Town Police Station on the said day Michael Britton died at the Kingston Public Hospital,” the lawyer said in the records of the claim.

In addition, he argued that Corporal Stewart “acted or purported to act in the performance of his duties unlawfully, maliciously and/or without reasonable and/or probable cause shown, and/or caused the plaintiff to be unlawfully confined in the May Pen . Police Station in the Parish of Clarendon, and then transferred him to the Darling Street Police Station in the Parish of Kingston, and then to the Central Police Station and Half-Way-Tree Lock in the Parish of Saint Andrew for an unreasonably long time before being brought to trial’.

Williams further said that the corporal “acted, or purported to act in the performance of his duties, unlawfully, maliciously and/or without reasonable and/or probable cause, and prosecuted the plaintiff by filing charges against the plaintiff, namely murder and illegal possession of weapons. (the criminal prosecution)”.

However, those criminal charges were dismissed in favor of Gordon in June this year, after an application filed by Williams was upheld without a case by Judge Leighton Pusey at the High Court.

Gordon, who was taken into police custody in 2019, has argued in the statement of claim that the false imprisonment and malicious prosecution by the defendants caused him “serious loss, damage, humiliation, damage to his reputation, character and integrity.” and caused him considerable expense and embarrassment.”

As a result, he seeks special damages in the amount of $4.88 million, compensatory damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, aggravated damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, exemplary damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, vindictive damages, plus interest, as well as costs for his legal costs.