Former prosecutor to take up magistrate post in April

(CNS): Following the recommendation of the Judicial and Legal Services Commission, Governor Duncan Taylor has appointed Kirsty-Ann Gunn as a Magistrate to Cayman’s Summary Court. Although the lower courts are currently pushed to the limit with only two magistrates currently on the bench Gunn will not take up the post until April. Gunn is currently working as a Crown Counsel (Specialist) with the Bermudan government a post she took up in September after leaving Cayman’s prosecution service in 2010. Officials said she was appointed as a local magistrate after an open recruitment process in November when a panel of the Judicial and Legal Services Commission interviewed five persons for the post.

This is the second magistrate appointed by the governor following advice from the Judicial and Legal Services Commission, established in the new Constitution introduced in November 2009.

Gunn served as crown counsel in Cayman for four and a half years before moving to Bermuda. She played an active role in the local Drug Rehabilitation Court as the Crown’s Senior Drug Rehabilitation Court Prosecutor. Called to the bar in England and Wales in 1998, Gunn previously worked as a Higher Court Advocate/Senior Crown Prosecutor in the United Kingdom for four years, and as an independent Barrister.