(CNS): In court on Tuesday, Justice Emma Peters directed a jury to find Sandra Hill, the owner of Cayman Marl Road, not guilty of blackmail and obstructing justice, having found there was no case for the local talk show host to answer.
After the Crown closed its case against her last week, Hill’s attorney, George Carter-Stephenson KC, made submissions that it had failed to show that his client had committed an offence and that the prosecution of the case was an abuse of process. While the judge rejected that idea, she found that the trial should go no further as there was no case against Hill that could fairly go before the jury.
The members of the jury, who had already heard all the Crown’s evidence, were directed to acquit Hill on both counts. The judge then discharged the jury and Hill, who left the court a free woman.
In her ruling, Justice Emma Peters explained that, given the “very fact-specific case” and the unusual circumstances of it, after hearing evidence last week from the Crown’s witness, John Felder, whose credibility was brought into question, she did not believe a jury could be properly directed to find they were sure Hill was guilty of a crime. As a result, she was withdrawing the case.
Hill was accused of trying to blackmail Felder when she sent him an email offering not to write any further stories about his business troubles or the various legal cases against him locally if he dropped a defamation suit against her. But the email, which the crown called the “beating heart of the case”, had been sent by Hill to Felder’s attorneys in response to a directive from the civil court regarding their legal dispute to settle the matter.
Felder’s complaint that the ‘offer’ was in fact blackmail was made six months later. He had complained to the police that the offer in the email was based on documents that were false or full of lies. However, the documents were, in fact, genuine, generated by his business partners and professional liquidators.
Justice Peters explained that, given the circumstances of the case, the content of the e-mail, the fact that that it was sent just days after a judge had ordered Hill and Felder to settle the matters between them meant that while the “phraseology” used by Hill may have been “unfortunate”, the defendant is a journalist who had been pursuing a story in the course of her work and had to be seen in that context.
The judge said Hill’s style is not to everyone’s liking, but she is well known and trusted by many people in the Cayman Islands for the work she does. She pointed out that, in this case, the Crown had a duty to consider whether she had reasonable grounds to send the e-mail, especially as all the documents Hill had been referring to were genuine, even if Felder had disagreed with their content.
The judge stressed the public interest factor in journalists being able to investigate and pursue allegations about wrongdoing by those doing business in the community. She said that while Hill’s approach may have been “unattractive”, it did not cross the line into criminality.
The case is one of ten criminal cases the Crown has brought against Hill over the years, most of them related to her work on Cayman Marl Road and her morning talk show, The Cold Hard Truth. In the majority of those cases, Hill has eventually won, either in the early stages or on appeal, with one case still outstanding.
In recent years, Hill has said that she believes that this is becoming a vendetta and she is being deliberately targeted by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Hill was represented by local attorney Stacy-Ann Kelly and George Carter-Stephenson KC. The case was prosecuted by Martin Mulgrew.
