Nine-year nightmare: Former TAJ cashiers exonerated after spending nearly a decade facing fraud charges

Five women who were arrested and charged nine years ago in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud, which the authorities said was uncovered at Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ), were exonerated yesterday, ending a case plagued by nearly three dozen adjournments and an abandoned trial.

Dermain Shakespeare, Kelly-Ann Wright, Sherine Leslie, Shanna-Kay Simmonds-Johnson and Sherika Stewart, all cashiers employed to TAJ at the time of their arrests in 2017, walked free from the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court after a judge dismissed the case for want of prosecution.

Want of prosecution is a legal term used when a case is dismissed because it was delayed for various reasons over an unreasonable amount of time.

The women are now contemplating a lawsuit against the State seeking compensation for breach of several constitutional rights, including the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, according to an attorney in the case.

Althea Freeman, the attorney for Wright, said dismissing the case was the best outcome, “given the nature and the history of the matter”.

“It’s only fair that justice is balanced. It must be fair to both the accused person and the victims. It cannot be continuously skewed towards allowing the prosecution to be nonchalant,” she told The Gleaner yesterday.

Attorneys from the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) were prosecuting the case on a fiat from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), court records show.

They were not present in court yesterday and as a result, attorneys for the five women asked the presiding judge to dismiss the charges for want of prosecution, citing the nine-year delay in the case.

A court clerk, instead, requested another adjournment.

The presiding judge denied the request by the court clerk, noting that the women’s lives have been impacted by the nine-year wait and expressed the view that prosecuting attorneys were not ready to proceed with the case.

All five were arrested in January 2017 during a raid at TAJ’s Cross Roads, St Andrew offices, which was conducted by MOCA, with assistance from the Revenue Protection Division and the Financial Investigations Division.

The law-enforcement agencies indicated at the time that the Government had lost millions of dollars through a fraudulent scheme uncovered there.

Days later, Shakespeare, Wright, Leslie Simmonds-Johnson and Stewart were charged with several crimes, including conspiracy to defraud, forgery, falsification of records, and larceny as a servant.

Court records show that case management hearings caused more than a dozen adjournments before it was set for trial on September 24, 2019.

However, the trial did not commence until October 19, 2021 after additional adjournments.

According to the records, up to February last year – more than three years after the trial started – only one witness had given evidence, and there were another 30 adjournments.

Shakespeare was represented by attorneys Christopher Townsend and Chadwick Berry; Leslie was represented by Obika Gordon; Simmonds-Johnson was represented by Kymberli Whittaker; and Stewart was represented by Orville Morgan.

 livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com