Expert witness branded as clueless
Published:Wednesday | May 4, 2022 | 12:15 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
The prosecution’s expert witness, who is giving evidence about the data including the secret recordings of conversations among alleged members of the Clansman-One Don Gang contained on three cell phones, was yesterday accused of being clueless by senior defence lawyer Lloyd McFarlane.
“The witness is doing things that are telling us that he has no clue about what he is doing,” said the lead counsel for alleged gang leader Andre ‘Blackman’ Bryan, who, along with 32 other alleged gang members, is being tried on an indictment with 25 counts under the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organizations) Act and the Firearms Act in the Home Circuit Court.
The lawyer made the unflattering remark after the digital forensic examiner fumbled on day two of his evidence-in-chief while trying to respond to a question pertaining to whether a call that was captured in his extraction report was incoming or outgoing.
The expert witness, a police corporal, when asked by the prosecutor if the call in question was an outgoing call, replied, “It appears so.”
His response, which has followed along a pattern of uncertainty since the start of his testimony, did not sit well with Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, who told him that he did not know what “it appears so” meant.
In reply, the witness explained that he was unsure about whether it was in fact an incoming call number as it had the same number as the receiving number.
When asked further if he could definitively say if the number had made the call at the time that was given, the witness said it was likely.
The judge, however, told him that he was the one who should be solving “that great mystery” as he is the person who was brought before the court with the expertise.
“At the end of the day, the lawyers want to know whether they must waste their time asking questions or they say, ‘OK, it doesn’t make sense to ask this man any question’. That is ultimately part and parcel … . It’s not a matter of being difficult,” the judge said.
“We want to be clear about what you are saying,” he added.
The witness, who did not appear to have a sound grasp of the information he was sharing, however, completed his evidence yesterday afternoon on the data extracted from the phones.
One of the prosecution’s star witnesses, a former top-tier gang member, had testified that he had secretly recorded conversations that had with alleged members of the gang on the three phones and handed the devices over to the police.
According to him, he had used a call recording app that he had downloaded on the phone.
But the expert witness told the court that based on the data that was captured on the phone, the recording application was purchased.
He was, however, unable to say when the application was installed as that information was also not captured.
The witness also told the court that he could not say what were the features of the application because he did not physically examine the phones.
Two witnesses from the two main telecommunication providers are expected to give evidence today.