CNB robbers say witness lied

(CNS): Five men convicted of Cayman’s largest ever bank robbery appeared in the dock in the Court of Appeal Monday arguing that their conviction by a jury over 18 months ago is not safe. The gang was convicted of robbing around a half million dollars from the Cayman National Bank in Buckingham Square at gunpoint, largely on the evidence of Marlon Dillon, a ‘supergrass’ who was also convicted in the same crime. He pleaded guilty and, after his arrest hours after the daylight heist, agreed to give evidence against the men he said were his accomplices. But lawyers representing David Tamasa, Rennie Cole, Andre Burton, George Mignot and Ryan Edwards argued that Dillon had lied from the moment of his arrest and throughout the trial.

Describing Dillon’s evidence as flawed and contradictory, the lawyers listed a number of reasons why the convictions are unsafe.

The defence teams argued today before the panel of three judges that Dillon lied about who he had committed the robbery with. They also argued that the judge failed to give proper directions to the jury on a number of issues and that evidence relating to the WestStar robbery that also involved Dillon and for which he named most of the same men as participants should have been before the court during the trial.

Sighting the constantly changing testimony of the ‘supergrass’, as Dillon has been named by his own attorneys, and noting the contradictory statements, the lawyers said that Dillon was not a credible witness. They said every time he was confronted with the inconsistencies and obvious inaccuracies in his story he would change the narrative to suit the new circumstances.

One attorney even noted that the names Dillon was coming up with could very well have been as a result of suggestions from the police. The RCIPS was heavily criticised about the way they had handled Dillon from the start and what was described, and accepted by the crown prosecutors, as the unlawful pressure applied to him after his arrest to tell the investigators who his fellow robbers were.

Last week lawyers argued the case against the convictions of Tamasa and Burton, who were convicted of a robbery at the WestStar offices in George Town, where masked gunmen got away with over $8000 a month before the bank heist which took place in June 2012.

The appeal court judges have not yet made any decisions in that case and they continue to hear arguments in the CNB robbery tomorrow.