ST. GERGE’S, Grenada, CMC – An attorney who successfully filed a constitutional motion calling on the High Court to declare flogging a criminal offense now wants it to recommend at less than EC$50,000 (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) in compensation to men who have been flogged in the past.
“I am satisfied that the High Court has put an end to that form of punishment, but I am not happy with the amount awarded for damages; it is too low; I think it should start at EC$50,000 and not EC$15,000,” said attorney Jerry Edwin.
He said he would also be filing a claim on the State to award men and boys who have been flogged at the instructions of a magistrate in the past.
Edwin said he would seek more financial compensation from the State because the men whose names the complaint had been filed received punishment from a state judicial officer who should have known better.
“According to the law, that punishment should have been delayed for at least 14 days before it was executed. The flogged men should have used those 14 days to appeal the sentence, and the judicial officer who instructed the punishment was an officer of the State who should have known better than to have the punishment executed forthwith.
“A magistrate is a creature of statute, and they should know better. Yes, a policeman did the flogging, but he was acting on instructions from a magistrate who is a judicial officer,” said Edwin, who believes that the minimum of EC$50,000 should be the starting figure for compensation.
In his 83-page judgment, Justice Raulston Glasgow supported the argument that flogging sentences violated the accused right to appeal.
“I find, therefore, that in the context of the kind of punishment engaged in cases of this sort, the right to appeal is part and parcel of the access to justice and procedural fairness afforded to the claimants and contemplated by section 8 of the constitution.
“This is because to have flogged the claimants before the period to appeal in both cases had expired would have shut the door on any possibility of them exploring the right secured to him by the law, a right that presented them with the possibility of reversing the imposition of this cruel form of punishment,” the judge said in the ruling.
Describing flogging as a merciless punishment that dates back to slavery, Edwin said that this form of punishment has not only caused men and boys physical pain and embarrassment, but it has caused some of them to be fatherless.
“These men were made to pull down their pants, bend over, and hold their scrotum while mercilessly beaten. This has caused some of them to be unable to have children, and so I will be filing a claim for the State to compensate them for their pain and suffering,” said Edwin.
He has, therefore, issued a call for all men who were ever beaten by the court to contact him so that their names can be included in the class action lawsuit.
“They need to be compensated. This was brutal, shameless, and all this was done at the instruction of a judicial officer who did not give a poor man who did not have a lawyer the opportunity to appeal the sentence,” he added.
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