Alleged drug dealer held for 5 years loses unlawful detention case

A Venezuelan man who has been held in prison in Cayman for five years, despite being acquitted of charges of laundering millions of dollars worth of gold in 2020, has lost his latest legal bid to be freed.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez Infante, 61, representing himself and without legal counsel, last month argued before Chief Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale that he was being unlawfully detained.

Although he was found not guilty of local charges against him four years ago, he continues to be held at Northward Prison pending the outcome of his appeal against extradition to answer charges of drug offences and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the United States.

Ramsay-Hale, in a ruling on the matter issued on Monday, refused Gonzalez’s application of habeas corpus on the grounds that he had not yet exhausted his statutory appeal process.

A habeas corpus application is one in which a person being detained challenges the legality of his or her detention.

Timeline of arrests, detention and court appearances

Gonzalez was arrested on 4 June 2019, six days after landing in Grand Cayman on a private aircraft of which he was the pilot. He and four other men were arrested on suspicion of smuggling and money laundering, and he was remanded in custody pending trial.

On 18 Nov. 2019, US authorities requested that he be arrested and extradited to face trial in the Southern District Court in Florida. The then chief magistrate, Valdis Foldats, granted the application for Gonzalez’s arrest and an arrest warrant was issued.

On 20 March 2020, Gonzalez was acquitted of money laundering charges arising from his 2019 arrest following a trial in the Grand Court, but remained in custody pending a trial in the Summary Court on other charges relating to the same incident.

According to the timeline in Ramsay-Hale’s ruling, on 8 April 2020, Foldats vacated the provisional arrest warrant on the grounds that the extradition request was not filed within the legal time limit – 65 days from the execution of the warrant.

However, a week later, Magistrate Kirsty-Ann Gunn issued a second provisional arrest warrant for Gonzalez, who appeared before the Summary Court on that warrant on 16 April. He was remanded in custody and the extradition proceedings were adjourned pending the outcome of his trial.

The US authorities transmitted their formal extradition request to the Cayman Islands on 16 April 2020, and on 7 May, Gunn heard legal argument as to the validity of the renewed application for a provisional warrant.

On 8 May 2020, she deemed the second provisional arrest warrant valid.

On 8 Sept. 2020, Gonzalez was acquitted of the charges before the Summary Court, and a few days later, made an application for bail, which was refused.

His extradition hearing was initially set for 19 Oct. 2020, but that date, and several others in the intervening years, were vacated for numerous reasons. These have included additional time and legal aid funding to secure expert witnesses from the US; time for further medical reports to be obtained; delays in approving additional legal aid funding for King’s Counsel; and Gonzalez’s local counsel applying to come off record as a result of a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship, Ramsay-Hale pointed out.

The extradition hearing eventually took place between 15 and 18 Nov. 2022, and a judgment was handed down on 25 Jan. 2023 in which Gunn, finding no bars to extradition, ordered that the case be referred to the governor for consideration under the Extradition Act 2003.

On 23 March last year, the governor – at the time, Martyn Roper – made an order that Gonzalez be extradited to the US to stand trial for the offences which he is alleged to have committed in 2006 and 2007.

Extradition appeal hearing delayed again

Gonzalez’s appeal to the Grand Court, which has been put off several times, was fixed for 18 June 2024, but the chief magistrate was informed during Monday’s appearance that this had now been postponed until 16 Sept.

Gonzalez, in his argument, had asserted that Magistrate Gunn had erred when she ruled that the passage of time since the alleged offences had occurred was not a bar to extradition. He had also argued that she was wrong to rely on the evidence of a witness, which he said was not duly authenticated, through which she found he was a fugitive.

He also claimed Gunn erred in not holding that his extradition would be incompatible with the fair trial rights enshrined in the Human Rights Convention and the Cayman Islands Constitution Order, considering that the offences were allegedly committed some 17 years ago; he is now suffering from early onset dementia; and has been held in custody in these extradition proceedings for four years.

Ramsay-Hale, in her judgment, agreed with Solicitor General Reshma Sharma’s argument that the remedy of habeas corpus is precluded where there is a statutory right of appeal, and that Gonzalez’s only avenue of redress lay by way of an appeal under the Extradition Act.

The chief justice ruled that since the decision in this case had been made at an extradition hearing, it “is expressly subject to the right of appeal contained in section 116 [of the Extradition Act].”

She added, “It follows then that the application must be dismissed as the remedy the Applicant seeks is not available to him.”