Beaten black & blue

Mentally ill inmate blamed for attack on 50-year prisoner

ANOTHER MENTALLY ill inmate has been blamed for the weekend attack on George Williams, the elderly man languishing in Jamaica’s prison system for almost five decades without a trial.

The accused inmate, sources revealed, is among scores of mentally ill persons who were recently transferred from the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre to the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre where Williams is being housed.

Williams, 71, suffered injuries to one of his eyes and to his ribs during the attack inside his cell at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre on Saturday, his attorney, Isat Buchanan, told The Gleaner.

“His face is black and blue,” Buchanan said of his client.

Williams was treated at the Spanish Town Hospital and returned to the St Catherine prison where has been isolated in a different section.

A CT scan was also conducted to determine if he had any trauma, but the results are not yet known.

Carla Gullotta, executive director of Stand Up for Jamaica, the human-rights lobby that hired Buchanan, believes Williams would not have been in any danger if the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions did not oppose the emergency application filed in court last week seeking the elderly man’s release.

“I am sorry for him because he has gone through so many tribulations,” said Gullotta, even as she praised the Department of Correctional Services for its handling of the incident.

The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) confirmed late this evening that it was aware of reports of an incident and was making enquiries into the allegations.

It’s reported that the septuagenarian was in his cell when another inmate entered and kicked him in the ribs, then punched him in the eye.

COURT HEARING

The attack occurred days before Williams is scheduled to return to the St Catherine Circuit Court for a hearing on whether he should be released.

Williams was arrested and charged in 1970 for allegedly killing another man during a violent attack on a family that was driving through his St Catherine community of Ivy, straddling the border of Ewarton and Mount Rosser, his attorney and relatives have revealed.

The then 20-year-old was declared unfit to plead.

However, in his affidavit included in his emergency application to the St Catherine Circuit Court, the 71-year-old charged that he has not received constant psychiatric treatment during his incarceration, but said several times – the last being February 22 this year – he was declared fit to plead.

Last Wednesday, he appeared in court for the first time in almost 50 years and was ordered to return on Wednesday.

Williams is one of seven mentally ill men identified in a report by INDECOM who have each spent at least 40 years in prison awaiting trial.