2014 in Review: Crime and Punishment

(CNS): With regular reports of armed robberies, violent assaults and even a carjacking, crime continued to be a major concern for the residents of the Cayman Islands, with many questions regarding the ability of the Royal Cayman Islands Police service to tackle it. The much anticipated trial of the former premier overshadowed other court cases this year, largely because of the potential fallout if he had been convicted.

Police Commissioner David Baines 

The year began dramatically with an armed heist at a downtown jewellry store, Diamonds Intentional, at around 8:30am New Year’s Day. Four suspects were captured by members of the public and by Police Commissioner David Baines, who was, police said, coincidentally in the area. Baines drove his SUV into the getaway vehicle to stop the suspects fleeing the scene. When they got out of their car he continued the pursuit in his Chevy Trailblazer, pinning two of them against a fence while the third man ”slipped ” under his truck, he said later.

Jonathan Ramoon sustained a number of serious injuries, including broken legs, hip and arm as well as internal injuries. An enquiry into whether the commissioner used excessive force exonerated him, but since it was conducted by one of his subordinates, an as yet unnamed officer in the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, not everyone was satisfied that the investigation was objective.

December found Baines once again at the centre of controversy after revelations that a man facing a murder charge in Jamaica had been recruited to the RCIPS. Tyrone Findlay and another man were convicted in Jamaica and jailed for 25 years for a shooting murder in 2010 when they were serving in the Jamaican police force and supposedly investigating a robbery. Findlay was recruited into the RCIPS in 2011 and served in the armed unit, despite the murder allegations. He was formally suspended from the RCIPS just a few months later on full pay.

MLAs Ezzard Miller and Bernie Bush called for David Baines’ resignation over the matter and Al Suckoo, the only member of the PPM government to comment, described the situation as an outrage. However, Governor Helen Kilpatrick has backed the police commissioner.

The Bush trial

The most anticipated trial of the year was the case against the opposition leader and former premier, McKeeva Bush, regarding the misuse of his government credit card and the cash advances he took to play slot machines in casinos. The trial began in Monday 15 September and ended four weeks later with a not guilty verdict on all 11 counts.

During the trial it was revealed that Bush had taken cash advances on his own as well as his government credit cards totalling more than $465,000 over some 45 days of gambling between July 2009 and April 2010 while on overseas trips. According to casino records, he lost over $260,000 to the machines over that period. The case against Bush hung on a very narrow point, but the jury found that although he had used the card to take cash for gambling, he had not abused the public trust or committed a crime.

Murder

There were three murders in the Cayman Islands in 2014. On 9 February in a murder-suicide, Jamaica nationals Nichelle Anna-Kay Thomas (21) and Devon Roy Campbell (39) were found dead at an address in Bodden Town. Thomas was apparently killed in a machete attack while Campbell hanged himself following the suspected murder.

24-year-old special Olympian Solomon Webster died on Sunday evening, 7 September, several hours after he was shot in Daisy Lane, West Bay. He wounded in the groin but the bullet hit a major artery and Webster died as a result. Jose Sanchez (27) from West Bay has been charged with the murder and the case is ongoing.

But even more shocking, on 27 October the body of 6-year-old Bethany Butler was found in a car parked on a side road off the Queens Highway in the Barefoot Beach area, having died as a result of multiple stab wounds. Shortly afterwards, the child’smother Tamara Olita Butler (37) was arrested on suspicion of the murder.

A West Bay man who was wanted by local police was murdered in Jamaica in March. Anthony Smith (33) jumped into the ocean on a stormy night to evade officers during a foot pursuit in October 2013. He left Cayman for Jamaica a few days later.

Several murder trials ended in guilty verdicts. In April Elsey De Ortega Barralga (29) was sentenced to six years in prison for killing her boyfriend, Perry McLaughlin, at his home in Little Cayman November 2013. Her defence was that she stabbed McLaughlin out of “fear, desperation and sheer blind panic” after he dragged her by her hair and rained down multiple blows to her head with his fists in an effort to stop her from leaving the house. Barralga grabbed a knife to defend herself but went beyond self-defence and landed a fatal blow when he was no longer a threat.

In the same month Raziel Omar Jeffers (31) was found guilty of the murder of Damion Ming in 2010. The judge told Jeffers he believed he was a cruel, calculating cold blooded killer, as he handed down the mandatory life sentence.

Jeffers was also found guilty in August of manslaughter in the shooting death of Marcos Duran in March 2010 but not guilty of the more serious charge of murder. The crown’s case was that he had masterminded a plan to rob Duran as he was on his rounds selling illegal numbers and that he had armed the assailants with lethal weapons. Already serving two mandatory life sentences for murder convictions, Jeffers was given a 20 year jail term by Chief Justice Anthony Smellie for the manslaughter of the numbers man.

Earlier that month Justice Alex Henderson sentenced Brian Emmanuel Borden (29) to life in prison after finding him guilty of the cold blooded murder of 28-year-old Robert Macford Bush (left) in West Bay on the night of Tuesday 13 September 2011, accepting the prosecution’s case that he was one of two killers who shot Bush in the head at point blank range while he was trapped inside his car, having crashed into a wall as he tried to escape.

In May a jury found Chad Anglin (34) guilty of the murder of Swiss banker, Fredrick Bise, and he was handed a mandatory life sentence by the presiding judge, Justice Alex Henderson. Bise’s body was found in the back of his own burned out SUV in the Mount Pleasant area of West Bay in February 2008, and despite Anglin’s arrest in the immediate wake of the killing, it was not until 2013 that he was charged.

In a trial in December for the same murder Leonard Antonio Ebanks was found not guilty of murder but guilty of accessory after the fact. Ebanks is already serving a life sentence for the murder of Tyrone Burrell in 2010.

High profile defendants

The trial of McKeeva Bush was not the only high profile court case. Joey Ebanks’ trial in January ended in jail time after he changed his pleas and has admitted to 17 counts of theft, forgery, fraud and deception. The former MD of the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) was handed a two year and three month jail sentence following a full confession about stealing some $140,000 from the ERA and from the Apple store in order to fund a two decades long crack cocaine addiction.

The former deputy chairman and director of the National Housing and Development Trust board was convicted in June on seven deception offences. Edlin Myles (62), who also works at a local insurance firm and was once a prominent member of the United Democratic Party, was found guilty of conning applicants of the government’s housing scheme into buying insurance they didn’t need. He received a six month jail term, but he has also been on bail since the sentencing pending his appeal against the conviction.

In March Bryce Gilroy Merren, a local businessman from a prominent Caymanian family was arrested in Puerto Rico was arrested for being involved in a major conspiracy since last summer to smuggle as much as 3,000 kilos of cocaine from the US to Cayman and to launder the proceeds through businesses here and a Puerto Rican bank.

Former RCIPS officer Elvis Ebanks was found guilty in May of bribery and breach of trust, after he asked for a bribe of over CI$500 not to pursue a criminal case against a Filipino national who was suspected of stealing a phone. Ebanks is the first public official convicted under the anti-corruption law. But having appealed the conviction, he was immediately released on bail and has not yet served any of the three year sentence he was given earlier this year.

Austin Harris (41), a host on early morning radio talk show, Crosstalk, was arrested in March on suspicion of assault causing actual bodily harm and damage to property after an alleged assault on a female friend at a private residence in Governor’s Harbour. The case is ongoing.

Following his arrest in August, Canover Watson (43) was charged in November with a catalogue of corruption offences and money laundering in connection with a health insurance swipe card system contract worth $11M awarded by the hospital during his time as chairman of the Health Services Authority Board. Watson, a prominent leader in the community and a winner of the Young Caymanian Leadership Award, has denied all of the charges.

Deputy Chief Immigration Officer Gary Wong (47) was arrested shortly after a midnight collision on Saturday 28 December last year for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) and leaving the scene. He was formally charged in May.

After almost two and half years in solitary confinement ‘supergrass’ Marlon Dillon was released from jail in November after he was handed a three year jail term for his part in two 2012 armed robberies. Dillon was the key witness not only against his accomplices in the Cayman National Bank and WestStar robberies but also in the case against Brian Borden for the murder of Mackford Bush. In all three trials prosecutors said they secured convictions because of his evidence.

However, Dillon has placed himself and his family in grave danger as a result of that help to the police. Described as an exceptional case, for the last two and a half years the man has been kept in the most inhumane conditions and in solitary confinement. Unable to have visitors as his family were whisked away into witness protection, Dillon is emaciated, sick and traumatised by his experiences, yet he never asked for anything in return and committed to helping the authorities.

The former president of the UCCI accused of going on a spending spree on a government credit card to the tune of some $200k arrived back in Cayman in May after six years as a fugitive. Hassan Syed (47) agreed to return to Cayman without fighting an extradition order after he was arrested last year in Switzerland provided he could get bail to allow him to receive treatment as he is fighting cancer.

However, Syed is now caught a legal catch-22 regarding his forthcoming trial. He has been refused legal aid because of his assets but because those assets have been frozen under the Proceeds of Crime Act he cannot access them to fund his legal representation.