A legal battle is unfolding over the one hundred and twenty million dollars that the Supreme Court ordered the Government to pay George Williams, the mentally disabled man who spent nearly fifty years in prison awaiting a trial that never took place. The award, which includes seventy-eight point six million dollars in compensatory damages and forty-two million dollars in vindicatory damages, was granted on June twenty-six by Justice Sonya Wint Blair at the conclusion of a lawsuit filed by Pamella Green on behalf of her seventy-nine-year-old uncle.
Five months after the ruling, Wint Blair has not signed the final order authorizing the payout, Green told The Gleaner. A request for comment from the Court Administration Division has not been answered.
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Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Chambers has appealed the one hundred and twenty million dollar award in the Court of Appeal, according to Green and her attorney, John Clarke. The Government had originally offered Williams six million dollars for the five decades he was held in a high-security prison awaiting trial for murder.
In addition to the appeal, the Attorney General’s Chambers has filed an application in the Supreme Court asking Wint Blair to require Green to establish oversight measures for how the compensation will be managed. Green and her uncle, Aldwin Jones, who also helps care for Williams, say the delay and the Government’s actions are “disrespectful.”
Green, who lives in the United States, was appointed by the court in September twenty twenty as the trustee responsible for managing her uncle’s personal and financial affairs. Her responsibilities include acquiring property in Williams’ name, handling his financial obligations, and initiating or continuing legal action on his behalf.
She says the plan is to purchase a home for Williams so he can be moved from the assisted-living facility where he currently resides and live closer to his family. Green explained that although the facility is safer than prison, her uncle remains restricted and does not enjoy daily freedom.
Attorneys for the Government argued in their application that Green should be allowed to pay her legal team from the award, but that the remaining funds should be placed in an interest-bearing account at a reputable institution. They also asked the court to require an annual accounting of income and expenditures for Williams’ care.
The case of George Williams gained national attention after a twenty twenty report by the Independent Commission of Investigations revealed that he was among seven mentally disabled men who had spent more than forty years in prison awaiting trial. One of them, eighty-one-year-old Noel Chambers, died in custody in January twenty twenty.
Williams was arrested on July twenty-one, nineteen seventy after a deadly knife attack in Mount Diablo, St Catherine. That December, he was charged with murder for the death of Ian Laurie. A medical evaluation in February nineteen seventy-one diagnosed him with schizophrenia, and he was declared unfit to plead the following month. He was ordered held at the pleasure of the governor general.
In her ruling, Justice Wint Blair found that several state agencies failed in their duties, violating Williams’ constitutional right to due process and to a fair hearing within a reasonable time.
