Ballistics expert cross-examined in cops’ murder trial after judge rejects application from prosecutor (original) (raw)

THE defence, representing six policemen who are on trial for murder in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston, was able to begin cross-examination of a ballistics expert from the Government’s forensic laboratory on Monday, following last week’s rejection by Justice Sonia Bertram-Linton of an application from prosecutor Kathy-Ann Pyke.

Pyke had appealed to the trial judge to grant permission for the witness to take a spent casing back to the lab for further analysis.

The expert, who is a superintendent of police attached to the Institute of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine, faced a lengthy examination-in-chief which was led by Pyke more than a week ago. As Pyke came to the end of her examination-in-chief, she indicated to the judge that she wanted the expert to take a specific spent bullet casing back to the lab to find out which gun it could be attributed to, and which of the cops fired that round.

Hugh Wildman, John Jacobs, and Althea Grant-Coppin, the attorneys representing the cops, strongly opposed the application. They contended that the spent casing had no probative value and that the cops at no time denied that they fired during an alleged shoot-out with gunmen on January 12, 2013 in which Matthew Lee, Ucliffe Dyer and Mark Allen were killed.

Pyke insisted that she needed to pin the spent casing to a gun; however, Bertram-Linton on Friday put the matter to rest when she denied the application.

When the expert returned to the witness stand on Monday, Wildman was the first of the three defence attorneys to launch questions. The expert led a team at the lab that ran tests on firearms and ammunition that were said to be linked to the shooting death of the three men on Acadia Drive in Barbican, St Andrew.

Wildman also sought to ascertain whether the expert personally collected all items that were submitted to the lab for testing. He pressed the witness to explain whether he was able to say where the items identified in court were taken from before they reached the lab.

“What I can say is where they were said to have been taken from,” the witness replied.

He added that he did not collect any evidence from the scene of the incident, nor did he visit the scene at any point. The superintendent said that he and members of the team he supervised only collected the items when they were taken to the lab by a detective for testing.

“I am not the person who made every record… but I physically handled all the packages [with firearms and ammunition] when they were submitted,” he said.

The witness denied that after he completed his testing he submitted an addendum to the court. According to him, he only prepared the addendum but could not say who submitted it as part of the case. He told the court that the addendum was given to Pyke while he was giving evidence in the trial but could not say by whom it was submitted.

The witness said a representative from the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom) came to the lab many years ago and collected the report from the lab.

He told the seven-member jury that he did not possess a copy of the addendum; however, he could refer to his notes in order to answer questions regarding the contents of the addendum.

He confirmed that in the addendum, there were items marked V, W and X.

“All firearms in the addendum are service pistols. No service pistols were presented in court [throughout] my testimony. There were some spent casings that were not identified with a specific firearm. As done in many instances, he or she will submit additional firearms if spent casings had a match.”

In response to Wildman’s direct question as to whether or not he found a match for the items, the witness said “No”.

Two illegal firearms — an Arcus 9mm pistol and a Mac 11 sub-machine gun — were allegedly taken from the deceased men. The expert told Wildman on Monday that a spent casing was matched to the Arcus.

“What I can say is that a spent casing came from the crime scene that matched test-fires from that firearm,” he said.

On trial for murder are Sergeant Simroy Mott and Corporal Donovan Fullerton, along with constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards, Orandy Rose, and Richard Lynch. Corporal Fullerton is also charged with making a false statement to Indecom.