Ex-Haiti mayor accused of killing, torture faces civil trial Wife of man killed by Oregon police gets apology, settlement
BOSTON (AP) — Accusations of political violence and terror have followed a former Haitian mayor all the way to a Boston courtroom, where a civil trial began Monday that shines a light on the wider issue of bloodshed and unaccountability in the Caribbean nation’s politics.
Attorneys painted widely different pictures of Jean Morose Viliena during opening arguments in U.S. District Court in Boston. Those included claims of a killing, torture and arson — or a successful mayor who helped improve the town of Les Irois in the late 2000s.
Viliena, who now lives in Massachusetts, is being sued by three Haitian citizens who say they or their relatives were persecuted by him and his political allies.
The suit was filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, which allows civil lawsuits to be filed in the U.S. against foreign officials who allegedly committed torture or extrajudicial killing — if all legal avenues in their home country have been exhausted. It was filed by the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco.
The defense said Viliena was not involved in violence and increased services while leading Les Irois, a town of around 22,000 people on Haiti’s westernmost tip, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the capital Port-au-Prince.
Viliena’s attorney, Peter Haley told the 12-person jury during opening statements about a farmer’s son who got an education, ran for mayor in 2006 and brought more paved roads, a medical clinic, waste pickup and a better education system — all lacking before his election.
Viliena is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S., and he moved to the Boston suburb of Malden in 2009, drives a truck and is a “very productive member of the community,” Haley said.
Bonnie Lau, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the jury that Viliena violently suppressed and intimidated his political foes, even after he moved to the U.S.
“This case is about murder, torture, arson and abuse of power,” Lau told the jurors
The plaintiffs — David Boniface, Juders Ysemé, and Nissandère Martyr — lodged legal complaints against Viliena in Haiti, but he was ultimately released and never tried.
Lau said they are bringing suit in the U.S. because they were failed by the corrupt Haitian justice system.
It’s not the first time a former Haitian official has gone before an American court to answer for alleged wrongdoing in their homeland. In 2006, a New York judge ordered former Haitian strongman Emmanuel “Toto” Constant to pay $19 million in damages to three women who said they were gang-raped by paramilitary soldiers under his command.
Viliena was elected as a candidate for the Haitian Democratic and Reform Movement and was backed by the Committee for Resistance in Grande-Anse, which according to the lawsuit dominates regional politics through patronage, threats and armed violence.
Armed paramilitary groups that ally themselves with particular political parties and candidates and function above the law are commonplace in Haiti, said Robert Maguire, an adjunct professor at George Washington University and Haiti expert who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The paramilitary groups provide muscle for the politicians, he said, and in return get material rewards such as motorcycles, jobs, government posts and access to power.
They act with impunity because of Haiti’s weak government and justice system.
“When there’s no police or judiciary to keep you in check, you feel like you can act like you wish,” he said.
Haley, the defense attorney, pushed back, asking Maguire if he was in Les Irois at the time of the alleged violence, and Maguire acknowledged he had never been to the town.
The plaintiffs allege that in 2007 Viliena — a loyalist of former Haitian President Michel Martelly — began a “campaign of persecution” against Boniface, a supporter of the political opposition, after he tried to defend a neighbor who Viliena allegedly assaulted for piling garbage in the street
Viliena allegedly led a group of men armed with guns, machetes and clubs to Boniface’s home. In Boniface’s absence, his younger brother, Eclesiaste Boniface, was dragged out of the house and fatally shot by one of Viliena’s men, the lawsuit says.
GRANTS PASS, Oregon (AP) — A lawsuit over the death of a man who was killed by Oregon State Police outside his home in southern Oregon in 2015 has been settled for $1.6 million after a lengthy legal odyssey, the Grants Pass Daily Courier reported.
The settlement includes an apology from state police Superintendent Casey Codding, according to lawyers for Robert Box, who was 55 when he was killed by two state troopers investigating a domestic disturbance at his home near Wilderville, Oregon, the newspaper reported.
Lawyers for the Box family complained of roadblocks in the long-running case, including an unusual procedural history on appeal caused by the sealing of records in the case by the trial judge.
On Friday, attorney Richard Adams and co-counsel David Park released a statement they said Box’s widow, Bernadette, wrote in response to an apology letter from Codding.
“I truly hope you take all this to heart and learn from it,” she wrote. “Training needs to be taken to heart. No other family should have to go through what my family has gone through.”
On the night of May 29, 2015, Box’s adult daughter Kelsey, who is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, reported she had been assaulted by her father during an argument at the family’s rural home.
Prosecutors subsequently absolved troopers Gregor Smyth and Heather West of any wrongdoing, saying Box pointed a loaded .44 Magnum at them despite their demands that he not touch the gun.
Smyth fired seven rounds, while West fired four. Box was hit and fatally wounded.
Lawyers for the family argued that Box, who had been carrying a loaded gun, had every right to be armed on his own rural property late at night. They also accused the troopers of essentially ambushing him even though they had been notified by dispatchers that his daughter had fled the home and was not in danger.
After 18 months of pretrial wrangling, Circuit Court Judge Wolke dismissed the case in 2017. In the process, Wolke sealed records in the case after a motion by the plaintiffs to amend the lawsuit based on new evidence. Wolke’s decision to seal everything in the case was unusual and caused unnecessary procedural problems throughout the appeal process that followed, lawyers for the family said.
Last year the Oregon Court of Appeals reinstated the case and remanded it back to Josephine County for a jury trial. The court said the troopers were trespassing when they encountered Box and made several tactical errors in the process.
The ruling on appeal put the case in a settlement posture, leading to the agreement last week.
According to the family’s lawyers, Smyth was terminated from the state police’s SWAT team three months before the Box shooting for a problem known in tactical training as “tunnel vision.”
They said the commander of the SWAT team at the time filed a report concluding that Smyth’s “decision making and overreaction have the potential to lead to someone being seriously injured, or killed, on a real-world operation.”