In 2003, CJA brought a lawsuit on behalf of two courageous Haitian plaintiffs against Colonel Carl Dorélien, former member of Haiti’s Military High Command, for a wide range of human rights abuses committed by his soldiers in 1993 and 1994. Dorélien’s presence in the U.S. became widely known when he won $3.2 million in the Florida lottery in 1997.

In February 2007, a federal jury in Miami found Dorélien liable for torture, extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity, and ordered him to pay $4.3 million in damages to CJA’s clients. In August 2007, CJA successfully recovered $580,000 of Dorélien’s remaining lottery funds after enforcing a Haitian judgment in a parallel action in Florida state court. Dorélien has exhausted his appeals in both federal and state courts.

In January and April 2008, the $580,000 was distributed to our clients, Lexiuste Cajuste, Marie Jean and her children.  Due to safety concerns, the fact of the distribution was not made public until May 2008.

Background
In December of 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former Haitian Catholic priest, won 67% of the popular vote in Haiti's first presidential election to be declared free and fair by international observers. This election followed years of repressive dictatorship.  Aristide took office on February 7, 1991, but was overthrown that September in a violent coup d'etat led by dissatisfied elements of the army and supported by many of the country's economic elite. From October 1991 to September 1994, an unconstitutional military regime governed Haiti.

The military regime was characterized by widespread state sponsored human rights violations, including abuses committed by the Haitian military and death squads supported by the military. Human rights reports implicate the military in extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests and detention. Several thousand Haitians were killed during this period, and tens of thousands more fled the country.

In 1993, Plaintiff Lexiuste Cajuste was arbitrarily detained and severely tortured by Haitian military forces under Dorélien’s command because of his role as a union organizer and pro-democracy activist.  Under international pressure, Cajuste was finally released and fled to the United States.  Miraculously, he survived the beatings but, fourteen years after the ordeal, still suffers severe physical disabilities relating to his torture. 

On April 22, 1994, military and paramilitary forces gunned down Plaintiff Marie Jean’s husband, Michel Pierre, during the attack against civilians in the impoverished seaside neighborhood of Raboteau on the outskirts of the city of Gonaïves. Units of the Haitian Armed Forces, together with members of the paramilitary group known as "FRAPH", an acronym for Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, and also a pun on the French and Creole word "to hit", invaded Raboteau, terrorizing the community, and killing at least two dozen and possibly as many as one hundred unarmed civilians.  Many of those killed were shot in boats and fell or were later thrown into the ocean, thus making it impossible to know the total death toll. Some of the bodies -- mutilated by their attackers or by sharks -- were washed back to shore. More than fifty homes were destroyed.   (CJA has also brought a lawsuit for other human rights abuses against the leader of FRAPH, Emmanuel “Toto” Constant. Click here for more information on the case against Constant.) .

Dorélien was convicted in absentia in Haiti in November 2000 for conspiracy and complicity in murder and other crimes in connection with the Raboteau massacre. This involved charges that Dorélien was aware of abuses being committed by his subordinates, and that he failed to take action to prevent such abuses or to punish those responsible, thus leading to the abuses perpetrated in Raboteau. The Haiti trial was deemed fair by international observers. In addition to his guilty conviction, Dorélien, along with his co-defendants, was ordered to pay the Raboteau victims 1 billion gourdes, or approximately $28 million. CJA client Marie Jean was a party to that judgment.

Jean v. Dorélien

The Federal Court Case
On January 24, 2003, CJA filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami against former Colonel Dorélien on behalf of  Marie Jeanne Jean and her two young children. The lawsuit was served on Dorélien on January 25, 2003, while he was in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He had been detained in 2001 in connection with his alleged role in human rights abuses. He was deported to Haiti on January 27, 2003.  In October 2003, CJA amended the complaint to add as a plaintiff Lexiuste Cajuste.

After Dorélien was deported to Haiti, he was taken into custody for the in absentia  conviction in the Raboteau case.  Under Haitian law, he had the right to a new trial, a right he chose not to exercise. One year later, when violence erupted in 2004 and President Aristide was ousted from office, he and many others convicted in the Raboteau case were freed from jail. He currently lives freely and openly in Haiti. 

Meanwhile, in 2004 the federal court dismissed the lawsuit entirely, holding that the claims of Lexiuste Cajuste were not filed in a timely manner and that Marie Jean had other legal remedies available to her in Haiti.

On December 1, 2005, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned this decision and sent the case back to the lower federal court for trial.

On February 23, 2007, after a four-day trial, a federal jury in Miami found Dorélien liable for torture, extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity suffered by CJA’s plaintiffs. Dorélien was ordered to pay a total of $4.3 million in damages. 

This case represents the first time that a U.S. jury has held a former member of the Haitian military responsible for the widespread human rights abuses that were committed by the military against the civilian population during the 1991-1994 military dictatorship.  On August 16, 2007, after Dorelién failed to challenge the verdict, a final judgment was entered against him.  His time to file an appeal with the Eleventh Circuit has also expired, making the judgment absolute.

The State Court Case
While Dorélien was living in the United States, he won over $3 million in the Florida state lottery. Under the law at the time, he received yearly payments of $159,000. After CJA filed the federal case in January of 2003, Dorélien attempted to sell off his rights to the annual lottery payments in exchange for a lump sum. CJA, in conjunction with co-counsel law firm Holland & Knight and solo attorney John Thornton, successfully intervened before the Florida state court and opposed the proposed deal. They argued that Dorélien’s attempt to convert his yearly payments into a lump sum constituted a fraudulent transfer that sought to keep his assets out of the reach of his creditors, including CJA’s clients. In September 2004, CJA obtained an order from a Florida state court blocking the transfer of nearly $1 million to Dorélien.

Soon after, CJA obtained an order from the state court permitting the deal to go through, but preventing Dorélien from receiving the lump sum of nearly $1 million. Instead, the judge ordered that the money be paid into an escrow account under the court’s control. The money could not be moved from the account without further order of the state court.
Preventing Dorélien from receiving the lump sum was critical to protecting the rights of his victims.

In the meantime, CJA moved to domesticate the Haitian judgment in order to make it enforceable in Florida. In August 2006, the state court ruled that the Haitian judgment was enforceable in the U.S. Dorélien appealed.  On August 8, 2007, the Florida Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s enforcement of the Haitian judgment, thus exhausting Dorélien's appeals. Based on the domesticated Haitian judgment, CJA and co-counsel were able to recover the money in the escrow account. The final distribution to the clients amounted to approximately $580,000.

CJA clients agreed that any recovery from Dorélien would be shared equally among them (Lexiuste Cajuste, Marie Jean and Jean's children). It was also understood that Jean and her children would divide their share with the other members of the Association of Raboteau Victims who brought the original case in Haiti. In December 2007 and January 2008, Mr. Cajuste received his share of the proceeds which he will use to support a nonprofit in Florida that works with Haitian immigrants. In April 2008, Ms. Jean and her children received their shares which they agreed to share among the 91 survivors of the Raboteau massacre. CJA collaborated with human rights attorneys in Haiti, tax and reparations experts, and Haiti’s largest community bank to ensure the safe and smooth transfer of the funds to Marie Jean in Haiti. The final historic distribution of approximately $435,000 to the 91 Raboteau survivors was completed on May 16, 2008, in Gonaives, Haiti.