The Editor Speaks: Innocent until proven guilty but you stay in jail until trial
Brian Borden is accused of killing Robert Mackford Bush in September 2011 in a West Bay gang-related shooting.
Borden will not go to trial until January next year. This will mean he will have been imprisoned without trial for more than 18 months.
18 months! But he is presumed innocent.
Bush was arrested in August 2012 and his bail application was refused because under Cayman Islands law anyone charged with murder must be placed on remand until trial.
That doesn’t seem fair. Surely that is against the Bill of Rights?
It is.
The Bill of Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities stipulates in Article 5 that no one shall be deprived by government of liberty and anyone who is arrested or detained on suspicion of a criminal offence and who is not released shall be brought promptly before a court. If any person detained is not tried within a reasonable time he shall be released.
The question here is what is a reasonable time?
Lawyers for Borden have filed a petition in Cayman’s Grand Court questioning the validity of all the above.
Earlier trial dates were set but it is believed the Crown postponed the case each time.
We published in iNews Cayman on July 10th 2013 the story from UK’s tabloid The Daily Mail – “British mother locked in squalid Caribbean jail for a YEAR without charge”. It was a major story in one of the United Kingdom’s most popular news sources.
Brian Borden is British. The recent Prison Inspectorate described the conditions at Northward Prison as “shambolic with most accommodation barely fit for human habitation.” Borden has been in this prison for nearly a year without trial. A trial now set in six months time with no guarantee it will not be further postponed.
I wonder what The Daily Mail would do with this story?
