Defence Counsel Loses Application To Halt Proceedings Against Men Who Hauled Over 300 Kilograms of Ganja Into Cayman. 

By Alric Lindsay

Three Jamaican men and one Caymanian man accused of importing more than 300 kilograms of ganja and about two kilograms of cocaine into the Cayman Islands by boat have failed in a bid to have the prosecution stopped, after the Chief Magistrate rejected their claim that they were victims of human trafficking forced to make the trip after being threatened by a gang.

The four accused — Ricky William Manderson, Alverang Anthony Levy, Erick Anthony Bandoo and Garwayne Benjamin — are charged with the importation of cocaine and the importation of Ganja; the court put the quantities at more than 300 kilograms of Ganja and about 2.04 kilograms of cocaine. The three Jamaican men — Levy, Bandoo and Benjamin — also face a charge of illegal landing.

The Crown’s case

The Chief Magistrate explained that, according to DPP Crown Counsel, in August 2025, Coast Guard patrols intercepted a suspicious vessel near East End and saw the men allegedly attempting to offload packages; one of them threw his phone overboard as officers approached.

In interviews after their arrest, the men said they had been coerced into the voyage. One said he had been held at gunpoint by men with “long guns” and told to take three men and packages to Cayman or he and his family would be killed. Another said he had been held against his will for two days before being forced onto the boat. A third said men in his community — whom he associated with a Jamaican gang he named in court — had threatened him and his children until he agreed. A fourth said he had been told he was being taken to fish at Pedro Banks before a masked man produced a gun and showed him a photograph of his family.

The application and the ruling

The defence applied to stop  the proceedings as an abuse of the court’s process, arguing that the men should not stand trial at all because the police and prosecution had failed to investigate whether they were trafficking victims before deciding to charge them — said to breach positive obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of slavery and forced labour) and Article 26 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (the non‑punishment of victims compelled to offend).

The Chief Magistrate refused the application. Applying the high threshold that such a stay “must be exercised carefully and sparingly and only for very compelling reasons,” she found that the RCIPS and the Crown had been guided by their knowledge and intelligence of drug‑importation operations from Jamaica by boat, and that the accounts of coercion had been considered but were “contradictory in some respects” and gave no reason to pursue further lines of inquiry.

“It is not an unsophisticated network where four gentlemen are pulled from different areas and placed on a boat to deliver such huge quantities of drugs,” she said.

She identified no bad faith, and concluded that the conduct of the investigation and the Crown’s charging decision “does not offend the court’s sense of justice and propriety.” The trafficking argument, she held, did not meet the “very high standard” required.

Next steps

The Crown elected trial in the Grand Court.  A committal hearing was tentatively fixed for August 6, 2026, with the men to appear by video link and the form of committal (long‑form or short‑form) to be confirmed by the court early the following week.