Chief justice rejects alleged gangster-informer evidence
THE prosecution on Monday hit a roadblock in its attempt to have information previously withheld by a police witness accepted as evidence in the trial of 33 alleged members of the One Don faction of the Klansman Gang in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston.
It was revealed that since 2014 Owen Ormsby, one of the accused, had been feeding a police corporal with information on the names of main players and some of the inner workings of the gang.
The corporal told the court on Monday that he was given instructions in 2019 to apprehend a wanted man off the Sligoville main road as part of a gang investigation. Upon carrying out the instructions, the cop said he arrested a man he recognised as “Mikie”, who was identified in court as Orsmby.
The corporal took him into custody but failed to share the information about his dealings with Ormsby to investigators. In fact, he told the court that he came forward with the information in late 2021.
The prosecution tried to convince the court that the corporal could be crucial to the case because of the wealth of information he possessed. However, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, who is presiding over the trial, could not comprehend why the corporal did not come forward with the information until long afterwards.
The witness, in response, claimed he was deterred by the quick pace at which investigations elevated to trial stage.
But Justice Sykes said, “At this point now I would be hard-pressed to justify reception of this evidence.”
Justice Sykes added: “He says he didn’t know that the gentleman was charged, but it must have come in your consciousness at some point. Even then, he doesn’t go back to say now that I realised that the man is actually charged, here is some information that I can give you. He doesn’t do that but he comes today as if it is revelation arising, having spoken to him. I am not saying that it has to be in a statement, but it has to be in context. This is something that he had all this time.”
The chief justice then cleared the way for another police witness, a detective sergeant, who said that in 2017 he performed duties as a forensic crime scene investigator.
The investigator said one of his tasks at the time was to photograph graffiti on walls in alleged One Don territory in Spanish Town. A number of photographs were presented in court showing numerous walls painted with words including, “One Don”, “Blackman”, “Team Proud Family” and “PNP”.