Evita Ann Dixon, 38, a legal executive in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, went before a jury on 29 June 2021 charged under the Anti-Corruption Law with trying to hide the file on her son’s ganja possession case.[1] Rory Field, a barrister and former director of public prosecutions in Bermuda, was brought to the Cayman Islands to present the case because Cayman’s own prosecutors had a conflict.[1] Field told the jury that Dixon first kept the physical file out of sight and then took her son’s name off the electronic version so that it would not appear in searches.[1]

The prosecution said she later gave the file to a prosecutor and asked whether her son could be given only a caution, and that when the file came back to the office she kept it from the prosecutor again.[1] Her son was charged alongside another man, and when that second defendant was recommended for prosecution it became clear that her son’s file was missing.[1] A colleague tracked the electronic file by case number rather than by name, and anti-corruption officers found the physical file in Dixon’s desk and linked the changes to her office username.[1] Dixon denied hiding or tampering with the file and told investigators that staff around the office routinely used each other’s usernames.[1] She said she was being falsely accused by management and had been bullied and victimised by senior counsel and others because she was Caymanian.[1]

The trial had been due to start the previous week but legal issues delayed it, and Field was expected to call the crown’s first witness on the Wednesday.[1] The Cayman Islands Anti-Corruption Commission said it charged Dixon on 14 April 2020 with one count of breach of trust under the Anti-Corruption Law while she was support staff at the DPP’s office, and bailed her to appear in Summary Court on 26 May 2020.[2] The Commission said the case was identified internally at an early stage and immediately referred to it for investigation, with charging advice from an independent legal advisor.[2] In closing his defence on 26 July 2021, Dixon’s lawyer Courtney Griffiths QC told the jury that black and Caymanian staff, including crown counsel, had been discriminated against in the office.[3] Field dismissed the claims of racism and bullying as ordinary inter-office disputes, and the case continued.[3]