When Devon Anglin was acquitted for the murder of 4-year-old Jeremiah Barnes over three years ago, Cayman Islands Police Commissioner David Baines said, “I think it is a sad day for the family and I think it is a desperate day for justice on this island.”

Baines made it very clear he believed the judge had made the wrong decision and would be asking for an appeal on the decision.

“If we don’t do that then we leave the guilty without having to account for their actions. It’s right that the people on these islands see justice once in a while and if we can’t do it for an innocent four-year-old, who we can do it for?” he asked.

“I believe we had a strong case … this was police work at its best,” he added.

This prompted Cayman’s most well respected attorney, Mr. Ramon Alberga QC, to send a letter to the media identifying the inappropriateness of such comments by Baines.

Then Cayman Islands Chief Justice, Anthony Smellie, released a public statement that did not refer directly to the police commissioner’s comments but mentioned Mr. Alberga’s.

His release said, while the great majority of the responses which have followed in the media (most notably, perhaps, by Mr. Ramon Alberga QC) identify the inappropriateness of such comments, persistent debate in the media and in the wider community calls for a response from the judiciary itself.

“This letter offers what I trust will be accepted as an appropriate response.

“Confronted by the current unprecedented wave of armed violence, it is entirely natural that everyone will be concerned for the loss of our common sense of security – that sense of security that few places could offer as steadfastly as did these Islands.

“Our common security will not, however, be regained by futile and misguided attempts to deflect blame away from one arm of law enforcement to another.

“The rhetoric that seeks to blame acquittals by the Court for criminal conduct is not only misleading and misguided, it is also itself potentially harmful in the far-reaching and fundamental sense that it would invite a loss of confidence in the administration of justice in these Islands.

Now the Director of Public Prosecutions is seeking a retrial and after one and a half days of submissions before the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal the three justices have said they will need time to consider their decision.

The major problem for the Crown is that although a number of issues were argued during appeal hearing, the panel can only order a new trial if they find the trial judge, Justice Cooke, was wrong in law, and not on his interpretation of the evidence he heard.

Much of the Crown’s arguments through their attorney, Andrew Radcliff, QC from the United Kingdom, was what he saw as  Judge Cooke’s findings of truth and fact and not the law.

Sir John Chadwick, President of the Cayman Islands Appeal court, said he was “open to the idea that there was a point at which, in law, a judge could not simply ignore evidence”, but had he arrived at his conclusion in the correct way then he had not erred in law.

If the Appeals Court Judges do not find for a re-trial I wonder if Commissioner Baines will publicly apologise for his public outburst, “I think it is a desperate day for justice on this island”?