A man who was caught smuggling ganja and phones into HMP Northward has been jailed for six months.
On Wednesday, 7 June, Joshua Malazarte Garra received a half-year sentence for guilty pleas to three counts of smuggling contraband.
The charges stem from an incident on 17 June 2022, when HMP Northward experienced flooding in its kitchen due to blocked plumbing.
Garra was employed by a private company which was hired by the Cayman Islands Prison Service to clear the blocked pipes.
“When the work was completed, officers inspected the area near where the men’s truck was parked, and that’s when the contraband was discovered,” said prosecutor Alexander Barbour. “Mr. Garra and his co-worker were taken into custody and interviewed, during which Mr. Garra made certain admissions stating that he was paid $2,000 to smuggle in the contraband.”
Magistrate Philippa McFarlane, who presided over the matter, heard that Garra was supposed to hand over 84.92 grams of ganja and two cellphones to an individual in the prison, but later changed his mind and opted instead to throw it into a nearby bin.
Noting that the seriousness of the crime had clearly crossed the custody threshold, Barbour argued that at the time of the wrongdoing, Garra was in essence a trusted person within the prison walls as a third-party employee.
“Although he was not directly employed by the prison services, his services were being contracted by them, albeit through a third party, and therefore there was a level of trust vested in him, that would be no different than that of a person who might be employed to commit repairs” in the magistrate’s chambers but then looks at case files, Barbour said, adding that the crime was worsened by a degree of premeditation over the two months before it was committed.
‘Not the sharpest tool in the shed’
Garra’s attorney, Dennis Brady, told the court that the defendant’s simple demeanour made him an easy target for the real masterminds behind the crime.
“With the greatest of respect to Mr. Garra, but the old saying ‘not the sharpest tool in the shed’ rings true about him,” said Brady. “It was this naivety and innocence that allowed him to trust someone whom he had previous dealings with, to then go about and commit this reprehensible crime.”
Brady argued that true masterminds were more than likely already behind bars and were looking for someone “gullible enough” to smuggle the drugs in for them.
Garra, who is a Filipino national, listened through an interpreter.
McFarlane started with a 12-month sentence but reduced it due to the early guilty pleas, and the defendant’s previous good character.
Garra is not the only person to have been jailed for smuggling drugs into Cayman’s prisons. Last year, former prison officers Arnold Geovanny Cabrera Diaz and Rudolph Rambaran were both jailed for two unrelated charges of smuggling ganja and phones into Northward.
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