Superior Administrative Tribunal sentences Judiciary Power and Justice Department

SANTO DOMINGO. The First Chamber of the Superior Administrative Tribunal (TSA) sentenced the Dominican state together with its independent agencies of the Judicial Branch and the Justice Department to pay RD$1.0 million as a fair recompense for the damages suffered by a man because of a preventive custody he was given.

The decision in favor of the Frenchman Frederick Claude Lamy was issued by Judges Judith Contraras Esmurdoc and Rafael Baez Villalona, who order that the sentence be shared jointly and charged to the budget of the Judicial Branch and the Justice Department.

The sentence was the result of a contentious administrative appeal filed by Claude Lamy against the state, the Judicial Branch and the Justice Department.

The tribunal understood that it was correct to accept the contentious administrative appeal and sentenced the state together with its independent agencies to the payment of the compensation and charged to their budgets.

The court added that it has found that certainly there exists damages consistent with the fact of family separation, psychological suffering, both by the appellant and his wife and children, preventing them from having economic support and this must be compensated.

They also said that just as it had been established, the fact of having suffered preventive custody, by all right unjustly, as determined by the Appeals Court of San Francisco de Macoris, constitutes an illogical and disproportionate action.

The Tribunal said that it felt that the variation in the cautionary measures of periodic visits, and travel restrictions, for preventive custody, were excessive and arbitrary, "since this person has presented himself at all of the hearings of the process, and the aim of preventive custody as a restrictive measure is to insure the presence of the defendant in all of the phases of the process."

Claude Lamy had asked the courts to sentence the state jointly with the Justice Department and the Judicial Power to a payment of RD$15 million, and charged to their respective budgets, based on the criteria of direct and objective responsibility.

He argued that he was sentenced to two years in prison by the chief magistrate of the Penal Chamber of the Court of the First Instance of Samana. Likewise, that he was in jail for two months and 28 days in Samana and was released on 27 July 2010 by the Single Judge Penal Court of the Maria Trinidad Sanchez Judicial District.

According to the factual account or transcript of the process, on 9 March 2009, Stephan Jean Christopher Satin and the Jonatom S.A. company; Laurent Eric Fabrice Dartout and Sandra Chambon, Mathias Jean Francois Jambor and Bruno Thierry Legaignoux filed suit against Claude Lamy and his partner Alix Fortier Beaulieu, based on the alleged fact that certain villas were not delivered within the deadline, in spite of money having been paid for this as part of the contract for the sale of property.

Likewise, that in attention to a request by the Justice Department in Samana, on 7 April of that year, the Court of Instruction imposed travel restrictions and periodic visits on the 7th of each month to the offices of the District Attorney.

The Justice Department presented a formal accusation against Lamy and Beaulieu based on the complaint for the alleged commission of fraud, abuse of trust and work paid for and not carried out.

On 26 November 2009 the Court of Instruction of Samana ordered the opening of a trial against Claude Lamy and a writ of inadmissibility in favor of Beaulieu.

Regarding the defendant, the judicial status was changed, limiting the charges to the crime of work paid for and not delivered, keeping the measure of preventive prison and ordering in addition the measure of real coercion consisting of the provisional judicial mortgaging on the property assets of thedefendant for twice the amount requested by the plaintiffs based on the sum of their alleged material damages.

The criteria of the Tribunal

The First Chamber of the Superior Administrative Tribunal decided that by attributing the imposition of a punishment based only and exclusively for the tightening of the measures that had been carried out efficiently by the defendant in the case in which the sentence was pronounced, substantially and materially reduces the erroneous criteria that the judge or tribunal can order the provisional execution of imprisonment, which entails that the appellant has to be compensated.

The court rejected the thesis suggested by the Administrative Attorney General, in the sense that the existence of double jeopardy and that the appellant had not filed a counterclaim.

Federico Méndez