The Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal by Mikkyle Brandon Leslie against his conviction and 16-year prison sentence for gun possession following a fatal shoot-out outside a George Town bar in 2021.

Leslie was convicted in a judge-alone trial in February 2022 after evidence was presented in court that he had sent WhatsApp messages and voice notes “bragging to others about what he had done” after the shooting outside the Globe Bar on 1 July 2021, the appeal court judges said.

Their ruling, which was issued orally on 28 Aug. and published publicly on 3 Sept., noted that Leslie had boasted in the messages “that he had been in a gunfight, that he had shot back, that he shot one or more individuals causing injury, and that he believed one of them had been taken to hospital”.

They said, “In later messages, he gave more detail about how people had tried to kill him and those with him. He said one of the individuals he had shot went to the ground. He was to shoot to kill but his gun went ‘click-click’; in other words, ran out of ammunition.”

Leslie and others had been outside the bar when they were approached by gunmen who opened fire on them. Mark Andre Ebanks, 36, died on the night of the shooting, and Eldon Walton, 55, succumbed to his injuries about two weeks later. Wayne Alphonso Bellafonte Jr., 33, was later convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison for the two murders.

Leslie, who fired back at the shooters, was subsequently arrested at the Owen Roberts International Airport and charged with the illegal possession of a firearm.

The trial judge, Justice Phillip St John-Stevens, had concluded from the circumstantial evidence that the firearm Leslie bragged about using was a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and that spent cartridges from such a weapon were found at the scene.

In his testimony at his trial, Leslie claimed he had been merely “bigging himself up” and just relaying what others had told him. He admitted being at the scene earlier but said he had left before the shooting started.

St John-Stevens did not believe Leslie, and had also relied on CCTV footage, which, in his view, showed the defendant running from the scene shortly after the shooting, the appeal judges noted.

In his submission to have his conviction and sentence quashed, Leslie argued that there was no physical evidence, that no firearm was ever produced and no weapon had been found on him.

In their ruling, the appeal court judges said the WhatsApp messages were “clear and highly incriminating”. They said the trial judge had set out his findings with “care and balance” and was “unarguably entitled to come to them”. They added, “There is no conceivable basis for this court to interfere.”

Leslie had also argued that his sentence of 16 years was excessive. He stated that no one had previously received such a high sentence for firearm possession, a contention the judges said they doubted.

They noted that the sentencing judge had taken several “seriously aggravating” factors into account, including that Leslie had a conviction in 2013 for importing firearms into Cayman from the US, and that on the night of the shooting he had taken a loaded gun to a public place and used it.

They said the sentencing judge had “rightly rejected’ as a mitigating feature the suggestion that Leslie had been acting in self-defence.

“In our view,” they said, “the judge was plainly entitled to pass the sentence he did. Indeed, he could not have been criticised had he passed a higher sentence in all the circumstances.”