Defendants stay silent in CNB robbery case

(CNS): Four men accused of robbing the Cayman National Bank almost three years ago passed up the opportunity to take the witness stand Monday after the crown closed its case against them. David Tamasa, Rennie Cole and George Mignott all chose to remain silent and offered no evidence in response to the charges. Andre Burton also chose not to speak on his own behalf  but called his mother as a witness.

As the case against the four men, who are accused of stealing around $500,000 in the armed daylight heist, came to a close with the final admissions to the jury regarding agreed facts, the defendants were offered the chance to answer.

All four men chose to remain seated in the dock, despite the warnings that a jury could draw a negative conclusion from their decision to say nothing. Burton, however, called his mother, Rita Ebanks, a local taxi driver, who told the court that she had given her son a ride from West Bay to South Sound on the morning of the bank heist.

Ebanks said that she had gone back to her home in West Bay in the same building as her son’s apartment to check on her daughter, who was home alone, shortly after dropping a group of tourists at the Turtle Farm.

She said that when she arrived at the aprtments she saw her son coming out of his home. He asked his mother for a ride and she agreed to take him to South Sound.

Ebanks told the court that this was around 9:35am, or sometime shortly after. She said she was able to remember the time because she had collected the booked fair from Treasure Islands at 9:20 and had driven them straight to the Turtle Farm. She then went immediately to her home, just two minutes away. Ebanks said she took Burton to Cayman Crossing, where he was working, and dropped him around 10:05.

The 911 call to police from the bank on 28 June 2012 in the wake of the robbery at the Buckingham Square Branch of Cayman National was logged at 9:42 that morning.

Given what appeared to be an eleventh hour alibi for her son during cross-examination, Ebanks was quizzed by the director of public prosecutions over why she did not tell the police when Burton was arrested that he was with her at the time of the robbery. The witness said she wasn’t asked and stated that she did not think it would have made a difference.

Cheryll Richards QC pressed Burton’s mother as to why she did not “shout this from the roof tops” once her son was arrested, charged, tried and even convicted during the first trial that the police had the wrong man because she was with him. The crown prosecutor suggested that Ebanks was not telling the truth and her appearance in court Monday was in an effort to try and save her son.

Ebanks denied concocting the story and said she had come to the court to tell the truth and she had been with her son from around 9:35 or so. When asked by Paul Keleher QC, Burton’s attorney, if she had told anyone before about giving her son a lift, Ebanks said that she had told the previous defence team during the last time her son was on trial but she said no one had asked her to give evidence.

During his police interviews Burton had originally claimed that he did not leave his workplace in South Sound on the morning of 28 June. But he later admitted he had left to go to West Bay and implied he had gone looking for drugs. Despite the charges against him he would not say where he had gone or who he had gone to see, suggesting he did not want to give the person’s name to police.

With no further witnesses expected to be called for any of the defendants, the crown and then the defence attorneys representing them are expected to begin the series of closing statements on Tuesday.

All four men, who are on trial for the second time, have denied any part in the armed robbery and claim the evidence against them from their alleged accomplice, Marlon Dillon, has been concocted for his benefit and because he was afraid to give the names of the real robbers.

The bulk of the evidence against them comes from Dillon, the ‘Supergrass’, who was convicted of the robbery over two years ago but received a greatly reduced sentence as a result of his assistance in this case, another related robbery and an unrelated murder case. Dillon, who is supposed to be a protected witness, served more than two and a half years in a condemned cell at the George Town police station in solitary confinement.

Dillon claims he was made promises, because of his evidence against the men he says were his associates in the robbery, to join his family in the UK, who are in a witness protection scheme. However, as a result of his conviction, Dillon, who is a Jamaican by birth, has been refused entry into Britain. He is also in another legal battle fighting a deportation order after the Immigration Department warned him during the course of this trial that they were considering revoking his Caymanian status, which he was given because of marriage.