Activist appeals 7-day jail term for cursing Trinidad MP

(Trinidad Guaridan) Beetham Gar­dens com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist An­der­son Wil­son has been sen­tenced to sev­en days in prison for curs­ing Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds in 2018. 

Wil­son was found guilty of us­ing ob­scene lan­guage to the an­noy­ance of oth­ers and slapped with the sen­tence as he reap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Sarah De Sil­va in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day. 

 
How­ev­er, the fa­ther of five was not im­me­di­ate­ly im­pris­oned as he suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied for bail un­der Sec­tion 133 (A) of the Sum­ma­ry Court Act, which pro­vides for such in cir­cum­stances where a per­son is sen­tenced to less than 30 days in prison and sig­nals their in­ten­tion to ap­peal. 

Wil­son was grant­ed $10,000 bail and his friend Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, him­self a so­cial ac­tivist, was al­lowed to stand as sure­ty. 

De Sil­va was ini­tial­ly con­sid­er­ing a 14-day sen­tence for Wil­son, as she not­ed that the words used were dis­re­spect­ful, that they were di­rect­ed to a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and that Wil­son had pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for ob­scene lan­guage and re­sist­ing ar­rest. 

She de­cid­ed to cut the sen­tence in half af­ter con­sid­er­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea from Wil­son’s lawyer Dar­ren Mitchell, who asked the court to con­sid­er his client’s ex­ten­sive so­cial work in his com­mu­ni­ty and the fact that the of­fen­sive state­ments to­wards Hinds were made dur­ing a tense time in his com­mu­ni­ty. 

“The of­fence just re­flects him be­ing over-pas­sion­ate over the vast suf­fer­ing of peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty. It was not to be dis­re­spect­ful to any­one, es­pe­cial­ly Hinds,” Mitchell said. 

Mitchell al­so claimed that his client was the sole bread­win­ner in his fam­i­ly and had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his chil­dren ages two to 13 and his el­der­ly fa­ther, who is in­firmed. 

In re­sponse, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) George Bus­by sug­gest­ed the cus­to­di­al sen­tence was re­quired to send a mes­sage to cit­i­zens. 

“There is a time for jokes and a time for se­ri­ous­ness. There is a time for mer­cy and a time for jus­tice … This court has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to show mem­bers of the pub­lic what is ac­cept­able or not,” Bus­by said. 

In pass­ing the sen­tence, De Sil­va sought to en­cour­age him to re­con­sid­er his ap­proach to ac­tivism in the fu­ture. 

“To much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed. You have to show a bet­ter ex­am­ple to the youths in the com­mu­ni­ty,” De Sil­va said, as she not­ed that Wil­son claimed to have helped 68 chil­dren in his com­mu­ni­ty with the as­sis­tance of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). 

De Sil­va was care­ful to note that her de­ci­sion on his guilt and even­tu­al sen­tence was not in­flu­enced by Hinds’ po­si­tion or the po­lit­i­cal par­ty he is as­so­ci­at­ed with. 

“All per­sons, re­gard­less of their sta­tus, de­serve to be re­spect­ed,” De Sil­va said. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Au­gust 14 last year, as the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs was tour­ing the then flood-rav­aged com­mu­ni­ty.

Hinds claimed that he was con­front­ed by Wil­son, who re­port­ed­ly said: “For 56 years the PNM did (ex­ple­tive) noth­ing for Beetham. Hinds, is on­ly promis­es you giv­ing and do­ing noth­ing for the (ex­ple­tive) peo­ple.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Richard “Snake” Mar­celle, al­so al­leged­ly cursed Hinds and kicked flood­wa­ter on him, forc­ing the MP to run away. Mar­celle was al­so charged with as­sault by beat­ing and us­ing ob­scene lan­guage af­ter Hinds re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice.

Un­like Wil­son, Mar­celle plead­ed guilty to the of­fences at a pre­lim­i­nary stage and was fined $300 for the as­sault and $100 for ob­scene lan­guage.

Un­der the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, the of­fences car­ry max­i­mum penal­ties of a $400 fine or three months in prison and a $200 fine or 30 days’ im­pris­on­ment re­spec­tive­ly.

In as­sess­ing the ev­i­dence in case, De Sil­va re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions from Mitchell, who chal­lenged the fact that his client was not men­tioned in the sta­tion di­ary en­try which de­tailed Hinds’ ini­tial call to po­lice. While De Sil­va not­ed that the of­fi­cer who took the ini­tial re­port had a poor rec­ol­lec­tion of the events, she said it did not af­fect his over­all cred­i­bil­i­ty. De Sil­va al­so con­sid­ered a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view with Wil­son, which was record­ed the fol­low­ing day, and used to show his propen­si­ty and ten­den­cy to com­mit the of­fence. In the in­ter­view, which was used to show Wil­son’s propen­si­ty to com­mit the of­fence, Wil­son sug­gest­ed that the treat­ment met­ed out to Hinds would in­ten­si­fy in the fu­ture. 

Wil­son now has to file his ap­peal in the Court of Ap­peal, which will then be list­ed for hear­ing.