Man claims gun possession was ‘exceptional’
(CNS): Adwen Anthony Simpson (37) from George town has admitted having a .38 revolver loaded with four rounds of ammunition hidden under the car seat when he was stopped by police last October on Shedden Road. Appearing in Grand Court Friday, Simpson pleaded guilty to having the gun and ammunition but his attorney told the court that there were “exceptional circumstances” in the case, as he asked for an adjournment for the sentencing.
The minimum sentence for possessing an unlicensed firearm in Cayman, even when there is no evidence the gun was used in a crime, is seven years following a guilty plea, ten for those convicted after trial. Only in exceptional circumstances can the court deviate from that minimum sentence imposed by the legislators and that has happened only a handful of times since the law was imposed more than a decade ago.
Simpson, who is not known to the criminal justice system, has not yet said what the circumstances are that led him to have the small black and silver gun with him when police stopped his vehicle in what appeared to be a targetted operation in the very early hours of Sunday, 19 October.
He is currently in custody on remand and is now expected to be sentenced on 25 March.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Heres hoping the sentence isnt exceptional eh?
Here’s also hoping he’s deported.
I no longer feel safe here, there’s a very dark side of Cayman.
Time to find an alternative location.
good luck finding one, even the Vatican City has a very dark side
🙄 Where would you feel safer?
I’m not telling you lot. Last thing I need is a bunch of middle aged boring accountants turning up lol. You stay here, enjoy the authentic Jamaican lifestyle, wish you all well. Good luck
I left long ago and the grass is greener here, i thhink, not sure, maybe not.
Baltimore
Must be his sacred vessel.
..here were “exceptional circumstances” in the case…
How about exceptional circumstances in the Madison woman case???? Or it is all forgotten and nobody lost sleep over their “rightful” decision?
“A Madison woman who received national attention after being charged in the Cayman Islands with having a gun in her luggage [Her lost luggage was sent to port by Delta Airlines] died by suicide when she learned prosecutors intended to put her on trial a second time.’… She faced 10 years in prison. Her case became one of the highest profile brought by Cayman authorities against American tourists caught with guns or ammunition, often as they left the tiny island nation [SHE WAS NOT CAUGHT WITH THE GUN by the way].
Cayman jury couldn’t reach a verdict when she was tried in absentia. After the mistrial, crown prosecutors said they intended to seek her extradition to the Cayman Islands”
If people think a Wisconsin concealed carry permit lets them take guns with them on vacation that is their problem. She chose not to face trial and plead exceptional circumstances and that was her problem. And that suicide? She shot herself. Letting the mentally unstable have guns is bad news.
Reading comprehension problems? Try to understand what really happened.
Sorry, my English was only good enough to earn an Ivy League degree. Please condescend to particularity if you have a point to make, rather than parroting clichéd internet responses from twenty years ago.
The list of excuses made by the accused were just not credible. “I wanted to take the gun to protect myself in Florida”, “I was never going to leave the ship and go abroad” etc. Even a Cayman jury was not going to buy that lot. The facts were she was a concealed gun permit holder, she was an active Republican and she did not declare the gun was there when she went to collect it so clearly intended to walk off with it from the airport.
07 @ 6:22pm – Yes, it was tragic about the suicide of the lady who was found with the undeclared weapon in her luggage. The point is undeclared. Any day of the week, any passenger can bring a legal weapon (per relevant Cayman Islands approvals) into the Cayman Islands on any airline, when such weapon is declared at check-in for carriage and transported in the manner required by the airline.
The Madison lady, while perhaps being a legal gun owner in the US (we don’t know), may or may not have declared the weapon in her luggage. Likely she didn’t, as she would have been required to show appropriate Cayman Islands approvals to import the firearm. Clearly she had none.
So, she smuggled a firearm into the Cayman Islands. This is illegal and there are mandated consequences, which she might have faced. Had she smuggled a firearm into the USA and been caught, she would have faced serious consequences also. We don’t know that the thought of facing consequences for her illegal actions may have led to her suicide months after the incident, but in any case the Cayman Islands’ laws can’t be blamed.
Perhaps she was bringing her gun to Cayman to end her life. Who knows?
Another one who is unable to understand what he reads. She was on a cruise- passing through Cayman for few hours. Her luggage got lost in the US. Delta Airline delivered it to Cayman. So she was never in the possession of her luggage on Grand Cayman territory. Do you understand that she never ever intended to bring that luggage to the Cayman Islands? She might have intended to bring it to her cruise ship, but that has nothing to do with Cayman. Delta volunteered to deliver lost luggage to Cayman. The deceased lady intended to leave it with friends in Florida, once she learned it got lost.
Have some human compassion and honesty to admit Cayman had no business in arresting the Lady and charging her. The circumstances were more than exceptional.
Skylar Muck, an American visitor, was another scape goat who was made example of
So it should have been very simple for her to plead exceptional circumstances.
Except that she packed the bag,she knew what was in it, and she should have made it known to Delta that it could not be sent to Cayman for her.
If con cited, I have no doubt a Cayman court would have taken it all into consideration, and exceptional circumstances would have seen her never see a prison cell.
Her suicide is a tragedy, but cannot be blamed on the laws of our country.
Cayman court couldn’t make a decision and wanted a retrial. Don’t assume she knew either!!!
Wasn’t the “court (that) wanted a retrial.
The decision for retrials are made by the prosecution. Those are two different bodies.
Who, in this modern world, owns a gun and doesn’t know where it is? Especially if you have a habit of travelling with it?
I am sorry to hear of the circumstanes but what 1:06 said was correct.
First, she should not be taking guns overseas without alerting everyone of the gun in case something like this happens. Those parties should be airlines, cruiseline and any country visiting JUST IN CASE. A relevant permit etc should accompany the request.
Her decision to take her life sadly is on her. No one in Cayman was breaking any law. If she had filed the docs and backed it up in court there should be no issues.
You may feel we are like some 3rd world country and backwater town but we are not. And if so, please leave. No strike that get the hell out.
As for Skylar. If you break the law you must face the law. They are not going to allowed me a bly if I told them oops my bad, did not realize robbery was a crime here.
We are all wise in the hindsight.
On your version of events, she knew the luggage had a gun, she went to collect the luggage and acknowledge the back was hers indicating an intention to take possession of the bag and the gun. She ought to have declared the gun prior to seeking to take possession of the luggage. She could have pleaded exceptional circumstances if she did not skip jurisdiction and object to extradition. The only legal issue was possession and it was clear that she attempted to take possession and could have been found guilty of the inchoate offence.
Except it was misdirected luggage and not supposed to have even been in Cayman.
And still she went to pick it up without alerting the authorities. So no saint.
That is incorrect. She did not smuggle a gun into the island.
Please do your research before inserting your hoof into your mouth. You obviously do not know the backstory.
She sought to take possession of luggage that she knew had a gun in it. She had the chance to identify the presence of the gun before seeking to collect it and did not do so.
FFS. Read what happened. She did NOT want Delta to deliver her luggage here. It’s mind boggling how many know it all commenters don’t even understand what they’re forming an opinion about.
Did she attend the airport to collect luggage with a gun in it and identify the luggage as hers for collection? Yes. Did she know there was a gun in the luggage? Yes. Did she seek to declare the gun before trying to take control of the luggage? No. Did she do all she could to take possession of the luggage prior to the authorities intervening? Yes.
That is all that matters for the offence.
Your comments go to sentence. Sentence is affected by failure to attend or leaving the jurisdiction after arrest.
No spit Sherlock
Simpson should also be charged with every ballistics crime associated back to that weapon, including cold cases, and muggings. We need to raise the stakes for this “just holding for a friend” gambit.
Lol. I bet there’s not one.