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Jamaican
Immigrant Saved From Deportation |
Sitting on a chair in his Brooklyn Brownstone, Jamaican immigrant Frederick Lake sighs as he reminisced on the six years he spent in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. The time spent at the Upstate New York Fishkill Facility is fresh in his mind; fresher now that the U.S.Court of Appeals has declared he is an American citizen and therefore not eligible for deportation.
For the past two years, Lake has fought for this ruling, beginning with that day in 1998 when Immigration and Naturalization Service agents visited his home and arrested him, intent on sending him back to his homeland of Jamaica. Lake still gets flashbacks to that day when he was handcuffed and led out of his home and forced face down on the black asphalt street as neighbors looked on in stunned silence and Lake's face burned with humiliation. A part of Lake died that day as he experienced first hand the impact of the 1996 Terrorism and Death Penalty Act. So the recent ruling by the court is not as victorious.
The path to freedom has been a tough one for Lake, with numerous twists and turns, dating back to 1989. He even suffered two heart attacks "because of the stress" of his conviction and subsequent deportation proceedings. Despite evidence that tilted the scales of justice overwhelmingly in favor of Lake, he was sentenced to 6 to 18 years behind bars for a May 18, 1989 robbery. Three eyewitnesses identified Lake as the armed robber who took $103,000 in cash from a guard working the Payroll Express Co., during a delivery to a small factory in Inwood, Long Island. The witnesses, including the guard, told police and prosecutors that a short stocky man with a gold earring in his right ear was the culprit. The fact that Lake is six feet tall and his ear has never been pierced had little impact on the witnesses, the officers, or the jury.
On that day, the Brooklyn resident insists he was holidaying in his homeland of Jamaica. Upon his return his wife told him of the officers visit and he went to the precinct where he was placed under arrest. Fingerprints taken a short time after the alleged stick-up also failed to place Lake at the crime scene.
Lake even presented the court with not only a manifest from the Air Jamaica flight vouching for his claim that he was in Jamaica, but also the airline ticket and the Jamaican immigration stamps in his passport, which showed that he left the United States from Miami on May 12th and arrived in Kingston, Jamaica later the same day. He returned to the U.S. on September 29, 1989. A stamp from U.S. immigration confirmed this, but even this fact did little to sway the minds of the jury that Lake was not their man. Written testimonies from several police officers in Jamaica as well as a letter from the Jamaica Consulate endorsing the validity of the stamps in Lake's passport also did not convince the jury.
Ironically, it was the testimony of Jamaican Immigration Officer Selvyn Hemmings which convinced the jury that the immigration stamp could have been forged since no record of an immigration card being filled out by Lake was found.
So Lake was found guilty and began serving his sentence at the Fishkill Correctional Facility. For the next six years he wrote dozens of letters to all whom he felt could help his case and prove his innocence. They included Jamaica's Prime Minister, Minister of National Security, then police commissioners, and the attorney general. He also wrote to key U.S. officials including President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, Congressman Major Owens and Councilwoman Una Clarke. Almost all responded with a perfunctory note of apology for his incarceration but that there was nothing they could really do to help. Several also referred him to other sources, including the media. Lake's frustration level deepened as his case seemed lost in the bureaucracy that surrounds the justice system.
He took to praying and relying on God to free him. Lake also took the Alternative to Violence seminar, the Aggression Replacement Training Program, the Attitude Adjustment class, the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Seminar, the Basic Education Class, the Zealot Jayceess, Alcoholics Anonymous and every Bible correspondence course he could find in prison "to keep from going crazy."
But he was not exempt from the brutal prison system that serves up not only emotional scars, but physical ones as well. Twice he was stabbed for refusing to give up his sneaker or coat. On another occasion, he was cuffed in the face for a tin of corn beef which his wife Melrose had sent him. The scars of these attacks remain today in the lost front tooth and scar on his left side.
Finally, the Jamaican government answered Lake's prayers and pleas. Senior Assistant Attorney General of Jamaica Lennox Campbell, acting on behalf of the Minister of Justice, wrote to the Nassau Court requesting a new trial based on the fact that the testimony of the immigration officer was found to be replete with inaccuracies.
This was earlier determined by Jamaican Magistrate Noel Irving who, on investigation, found that the officer's testimony was not only inaccurate, but that Hemmings was not on duty at the time of Lake's arrival in the island and that the absence of an immigration card bearing Lake's name was probably due to "the fact that it was lost, misplaced, retrieved from the custody of immigration by one of the agencies having access to the cards rather than to the fact that he did not travel on the date in question."
Based on this investigation by Irving, Jamaica's Ambassador in Washington Richard Bernal also wrote to Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Attorney General Reno, asking that they use their respective offices, in collaboration with the U.S. Justice Department, to study Irving's findings. But the study failed to convince the Nassau County Court and Judge Donald Belfi to throw out the verdict and have a retrial.
Lake's pro-bono attorney John D. B. Lewis, however, was convinced all along of his client's innocence. Lewis tried long and hard to prove Lake's innocence but to no avail.
"It was a terrible miscarriage of justice," Lewis reflected recently, adding that a Fordham Law Professor even questioned the judge's ruling. According to Lewis, that professor stated that the ruling questioned the jurisdiction of another state, in this case the ruling by Jamaican Magistrate Irving.
Lake was finally paroled in July, 1997, after serving 6 years behind bars. His parole was recently terminated and he is now a "free" man. The recent declaration that he is a United States citizen adds a sense of relief to Lake's life. But, his attorney is still cautious. According to Lewis, Lake's freedom may depend on the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on the Nguyen case. This case, like Lake's, questions the immigration laws regarding gender-based distinction regarding citizenship of children. It is this clause that aided Lake's bid recently as he fought his deportation proceedings. Lake's father is an American citizen who fathered him with a Jamaican mother out of wedlock. But Lake's father never legally acknowledged that Lake was his child. Because of this, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that "it lacked jurisdiction to consider this claim," (that Lake's father is an American citizen therefore Lake is also a citizen). The BIA's claim was, however, challenged by Lake and his attorney and subsequently, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Lake and reversed the BIA's ruling.
Lake is now trying to get his life back together. Prior to the conviction, he operated a successful auto repair shop in the New Lots section of Brooklyn by day, and at nights, he worked with Anglin Alignment Company. He has lived there since 1987 as a legal resident and has never had any prior tanglings with the law.
Ironically, the payroll company which Lake was accused of robbing, was subsequently found guilty of fraud. The scheme to defraud $25 million from its customers was discovered by Assistant U.S. Attorney David N. Lawrence.