- CONTRIBUTED
Clement Lloyd Beckford, a Jamaican who spent 25 years in a Bahamian prison and who is still in that country trying to get back home.Andrea Downer, Gleaner Writer
CLEMENT BECKFORD is a broken man. He is a man without a country; he has no identity.
After 54 years of living, he has nothing to prove that the name by which he calls himself is in fact his.
He spends his days holed up in a mental institution in The Bahamas, a facility that also doubles as a home for elderly people. As he hobbles around on crutches, his tortured thoughts and his past have no trouble keeping up with him.
He has been living at the Sandiland Psychiatric Hospital for one year. Before that, he spent three months at a half-way house, a temporary housing facility for poor people with nowhere else to live.
BIZARRE CIRCUMSTANCES
But conditions at the mental hospital are much better than what he endured for 25 years at Fox Hill, a prison in The Bahamas.
That is the opinion of Dr. James Shearer, brother of the late Hugh Shearer, former prime minister of Jamaica. Dr. Shearer lives in The Bahamas and has been involved in a Christian ministry at the prison for 25 years. He helped to get Clement released from prison last year.
When he was 27 years old, Clement was convicted of manslaughter for the death of his girlfriend. In 1980, he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for the crime.
However, Clement stayed in prison for 25 years, 11 years more than he should have.
A bizarre set of circumstances caused Clement to be returned to prison after he had been released in December 1989 after completing his sentence.
Born in Hanover, he had left Jamaica in 1971 to go to The Bahamas, but when authorities attempted to deport him to Jamaica after he served his sentence, he had no documents to prove to immigration officials at the airport that he was Jamaican.
WROTE TO MOTHER
In a letter dated July 15, 1979, which he wrote to his mother, who lived in Claudwell, Hanover, he confessed that he had destroyed his Jamaican passport.
"I destroyed my passport, which was expired in March 1975, about four months ago ..."
In the letter, he begged his mother to send him a passport or a birth certificate so he could prove to the police that he was Jamaican. He had also been charged with the murder of two other women.
In jail, surrounded by strangers, and facing a triple murder charge and the possibility of a long prison term, Clement reached out across the Caribbean sea to his family in Jamaica, whom he had not seen or spoken to in many years.
The letter, written so many years ago by a man who cared enough to inquire about his grandmother and brothers and sisters, held a tinge of remorse and stopped short of begging for understanding and forgiveness for the crime he had confessed to police that he had committed.
"... Mother, I am in the most serious trouble anyone in life could ask for. The kind of trouble is the murdering of my girlfriend and giving my name as Backford and not Beckford. Mother, I don't see through the word jealousy, but it had taken full control of me at that time ..."
Wanting ... waiting to come back home
CLEMENT BECKFORD was desperate. On the same day, he wrote to his mother, he also wrote to his aunt's husband.
As a boy, Clement lived with his grandmother, literally a stone's throw from the couple's house.
His aunt told The Sunday Gleaner that Clement was raised by his grandmother after his mother married and moved away from the district.
REMEMBERED LETTER
His aunt said she grew to love him as much as she loved her six children. She remembered the letter that Clement wrote to her husband.
"Yes, he did write to him, but I don't think he replied, because if he did, I would know, because quite likely, I would have written the letter, and I didn't," she stated.
His plea to his uncle-in-law was similar to the one that he had made to his mother. "... I have no paper to show my identity, so please write or call the Criminal Investigation Department giving them some kind of identification ... (also) check with the Jamaican Council ... that Clement Lloyd Beckford was born out there and has legally obtained a passport. Your service ... sending papers or passport would prove my identity ... "
BURIED IN OUR HEARTS
His mother died in May this year after a long illness, and according to one family member, her dying wish was for Clement's brothers and sisters to find her son, who was her firstborn, and bring him home.
However, another family member said they had forgotten him: "We buried him in our hearts," the family member said candidly.
So, despite his pleas for the return of his identity, when Clement was released from prison in 1989, he was unable to prove who he was.
He was sent to the airport to be deported to Jamaica. According to reports in The Bahamian media, Clement was taken off the aircraft and spent 10 days in police custody before being returned to Fox Hill Prison.
It is not clear whether Clement was sent to Jamaica and denied entry into the country by Jamaican officials or if immigration officials in The Bahamas prevented him from leaving the country because he had no travel documents.
BEGGED FOR HIS LIFE
However, what is certain is that Clement, a man who had already served his sentence of 14 years, was sent back to prison, where he would remain buried in the bowels of The Bahamian prison system until a fellow prisoner, Barry Roberts, who is serving a life sentence, begged Dr. Shearer to try to get him out.
"The prisoner said, 'This man has been in here for so many years that I think if someone does not help him soon, he will stay here and die', " Dr. Shearer said.
Dr. Shearer enlisted the help of his friend, Dorsey McPhee, who is an attorney. Mr. McPhee filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Bahamian Supreme Court in September 2004 and Clement was released from prison with an apology from the Bahamian government.
COMPENSATION
Following his release, Mr. McPhee filed a civil suit on behalf of Clement against the Bahamian government seeking compensation for unlawful detention of his client for the period of 25 years, one month and 28 days.
Two weeks ago, Mr. McPhee told The Sunday Gleaner that he was negotiating with the Bahamian government for an out-of-court settlement for his client, but he refused to disclose how much money he was asking the government for.
TERRIBLE YEARS
Clement is still waiting on his family in Jamaica to provide documents to prove that he is Jamaican so he can come home.
In a soft voice, barely audible above the din of hospital noises on a ward at the Sandiland Psychiatric Hospital in The Bahamas, he told The Sunday Gleaner that he wants to come home.
"The years in prison were terrible. I have to use crutches to walk as I dislocated my knee about 16 years ago," he said with quiet dignity.
His aunt was overjoyed that her 'son' had been found: "I intend to do everything that I can to get him home," she said, her voice emotional.
Tomorrow: Mapping the murder.
