Hell continues

He has been out 17 months now, but 74-year-old George Williams, a schizophrenic who spent more than 50 years in prison without a trial, continues a life of incarceration and poverty.

These days, the illusions of his mind, coupled with the rickety Linstead hovel in St Catherine where he and brother Aldwin Jones live, seem much harder than the metal bars he faced for decades.

Here, there is no electricity. Drinking water is rainwater caught and stored in plastic bottles. Rusting holes perforate a zinc roof barely supported by rotting beams. The toilet is outside.

In this new ‘cell’, termites make treks down walls undeterred by mouldy watermarks of past rains, and endless cigarette butts and matchboxes carpet the ground where Williams sits out his days.

“This cannot continue! The Government needs to hurry up and pay him what is his or send some assistance for him. But he can’t stay like this,” quipped a frustrated niece, Pamella Green, a bar operator, who besides Jones, is Williams’ only other relative and caregiver.

“We just need a better life for him. He is old and remember, he cannot work. So whatever little life he has, we want him to enjoy it to the fullest,” argued Green. “They need to give a helping hand or give him what is due to him because it is well overdue. Not everybody can survive 50 years in prison and he is here, so just give him what is due to him.

“He needs a proper house because this is deplorable, and we want to take him to the beach because I don’t think he has ever been to the beach,” she reflected, matter-of-factly. “He is approaching a second Christmas out of prison and he hasn’t enjoyed any.”

Williams made headlines in June last year when he was finally freed after spending over 50 years in custody without a trial.

In 1971, he was charged with one count of murder of a Canadian, malicious destruction of property, and wounding with intent stemming from what Jones said was the onset of mental disease in his youth. He had violently attacked the foreigner and his family in St Catherine. He was repeatedly remanded after the court found him unfit to plead.

His family, who never gave up the battle for his release, is now fighting for compensation from the Government for the injustice meted out to Williams.

“We need the authorities to give a helping hand,” stressed Green, noting that maintenance for Williams means regular cigarettes and alcoholic beverages to keep him cool and compliant.

Supplying these, plus footing food and transportation costs for doctor visits, is no easy feat, she said, rubbing Williams’ shoulder lovingly.

“Taking care of him is just like a baby ... . He needs that attention,” she noted.

PRISON ROUTINE

Prison has created an indelible routine for the man who last Thursday offered a few words coherently.

“I can talk a little bit, yes ... . Me glad [to be out of prison]. A life me a gwaan live, you nuh,” he shared with The Sunday Gleaner, his soapy lips parting to reveal missing and decaying teeth.

Green said she would love to take him to the dentist, but with meagre means, that is not a priority.

Williams awakes early each morning, bathes and washes the few pieces of clothes he owns. When dried, he folds them neatly on a bed he seldom uses before returning to his usual sitting spot on the ground, pillow clutched beneath him. There he spends hours smoking or tinkling with shells and strings wound together to be called “art”.

He prefers the ground, Jones qualifies quickly, holding one of the trinkets his older brother made.

“He wears them sometimes and loves to show them off,” he smiled, yet setting the undertone for his biggest problem with his sickly brother.

“I have to go out there go work every day and deal with daily matters and is nuff times he goes away, and it is because I have nuff eyes on the road them a call me,” revealed a worried Jones, adding that apart from church, which Williams indeed attends on Saturdays, “we still concerned when him touch on the road because it is a public matter. Sometimes when he leaves and I get a call, I don’t feel comfortable because I’m miles away.”

Hiring someone to stay with him will only add to the burdensome expenses, said the relatives, who themselves feel imprisoned by the predicament.

“It is like they are waiting on him to die; is so me see it,” Jones reasoned, admittedly holding little faith in the justice system.

They want the Government to act now before Williams hurts himself, or someone hurts him on one of his increasingly frequent strolls.

“When I say the Government, I don’t care which party it wants to be because for years, we are fighting for him to come out here, so it could drop under any party. But we expect them to even turn a little corner of dem eye and do a thing by now,” he argued.

“You will never see a next man do what this man did; whether it be a man who gets sentenced or not, you will never see it happen again,” Jones stressed. “So he is an icon for him little corner, and it is because of the Government’s shortcomings, and they need to tend to it.”

A damning 2020 report by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) revealed that 146 mentally ill inmates were being detained at the court’s pleasure, awaiting trial at the Tower Street, St Catherine, and Fort Augusta adult correctional centres.

Among them was Noel Chambers, another mentally ill man who died after spending 40 years in prison without a trial.

When contacted last week, Chambers’ sister, Joyce Davy, who spent years seeking help for him, said she, too, was awaiting a favourable response from the State.

COMPENSATION CASE AT A STANDSTILL

Executive director of human-rights lobby Stand Up for Jamaica, Carla Gullotta, whose team of attorneys is representing Williams, said the case for compensation from the State seems to be at a standstill. This while, according to her numbers, there are 400 more mentally ill inmates behind bars without trial.

“George Williams’ case is still there, but they keep postponing his hearing. We have been asking for compensation, but we are not able to have a court date. There was one in July, postponed. Then there was another one, I think mid-September, postponed. And all now we haven’t had any,” Gullotta said, noting that last Thursday an appeal was made to the court to speed up the case.

Meanwhile, it is still undetermined how much compensation Williams is entitled to as that will have to be calculated by the court, Gullotta explained.

“It cannot be that after so many years, he has been convicted without a trial, being a mentally ill person, he is out and nobody cares about him. He has the right to be compensated for all those years that they have taken from him,” she noted, labelling it as an atrocity on Williams and other mentally ill prisoners.

Gullotta explained that it is very difficult to locate case files for mentally ill prisoners languishing in the system, and even harder to find relatives and places for them to live after they have been released. Still, her efforts continue, she said.

Following the INDECOM report, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes had ordered the formation of a Mental Health Task Force and Court to deal with the problem.

That task force/court has been slow in coming, Sykes admitted to reporters last month, noting: “The policy initiative on that now would need to come from the Ministry of Justice. We have documented what the current state of the law is and looked at best practices, and made the recommendations, but nothing has happened in that regard.”

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com