Bush not immune from prosecution, says crown

(CNS): As Eloise Marshall KC summed up the crown’s case against McKeeva Bush for rape and sexual assault, she told the jury that the former premier of the Cayman Islands is not immune from prosecution. In court on Friday, the prosecutor asked the jury to consider not just the content of the evidence given by the woman who claims that Bush raped her in a mangrove clearing down a dark road sometime in 2000 but also how she gave evidence and the obvious trauma this has caused her.

“We suggest you can trust her evidence and that she is telling the truth,” Marshall said.

The things that caused the complainant to get very upset when she took to the witness stand in person and during her video interview with the police were the details of the actual assault, Marshall told the jury, saying that this should help them see that she was telling the truth, given how difficult it was for her to recall those things and how she was obviously disgusted and ashamed.

Marshall said that the woman had even questioned if it was her fault because she froze and did what Bush wanted, even though she had told him she did not want to do it.

If, as Bush claims, the entire story is a lie that she has made up, the prosecutor asked the jury to consider why she did not embellish the story and fill in the missing parts of the night that she cannot remember to make the story more convincing. “Why not make it easier on herself?”

Marshall pointed out how harrowing the trial had been for the woman, and how she had been treated in the courtroom, subjected to very hard cross-examination. But despite her distress and contentious exchanges, she had remained “dignified throughout” the ordeal, the prosecutor said.