Lawyer questions whether witnesses can match phone numbers to accused in taped

LLOYD Mcfarlane, senior defence attorney in the case involving 33 alleged members of the St Catherine-based Klansman gang, on Monday declared that if the witnesses from the telecoms providers who are to testify regarding supposed conversations amongst the defendants cannot attribute the numbers to the accused, that aspect of the Crown’s case could collapse.

The attorney, who represents accused gang leader Andre “Blackman” Bryan, made the claim during Monday’s resumption of the trial which saw a corporal from the Communication Forensics and Cybercrime Division (CFCD) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), who is a certified digital forensics examiner, being the first to take the stand after a seven-week hiatus.

Witness Number One, a former gang member-turned-crown witness, had testified that he turned over to the police three phones, two of which were given to him by the cops, with recordings of conversations between himself and members of the gang. The witness, who said he started working with the police undercover in 2018 while Bryan was incarcerated, to help dismantle the gang, had said the third handset was given to him by a member of the gang on Bryan’s orders. He said he downloaded a call recording app to automatically tape multiple cellphone conversations, which were also saved. He forwarded the recordings to cops when the memory became full.

On Monday the prosecutor eliciting the evidence from the cop led the court through the report which had been generated showing the date and times when the recordings were made and the corresponding calls for each recording. The court was also shown the contact list of one of the handsets which had some 70 names from which the aliases of several of the accused were seen.

The Crown said analysis was done to examine the activities surrounding the numbers saved and the number of Witness Number One.

“These numbers in the contact list correspond to the aliases given by the witness. The information from the service providers is basically to verify that the numbers were attached to the provider. The subscriber information will be matched back to the data extracted from the phones,” the prosecutor explained, following queries from trial judge Chief Justice Bryan Sykes.

Mcfarlane was, however, dissatisfied with those responses.

“My friend spoke of attribution. We have the evidence of [Witness Number One] saying these calls were made, and we are told we are going to have something from the service providers, but are we going to have something from the service providers to show the integrity of their collection process in terms of data? And is [the witness from the service provider] going to be in a position to attribute numbers to anyone?” the attorney wanted to know.

“I suspect not,” the chief justice replied, “because the proposition, as I understand it, is that when the witness says I spoke to Gary Smith, for argument’s sake, the subscriber information may very well be in another name, so that is what I suspect.”

Mcfarlane then responded, “I suspect we are going through an exercise that may not take us very far.”

In the meantime the corporal, who said he was in February of this year assigned the case after the officer who had originally been handling the case left the division, told the court that after accessing the data left by that officer, he conducted a verification process to “validate the integrity of the data”. He said that process would have indicated if the data on the devices had been changed in any way.

“There were no changes whatsoever to the data,” the expert witness said.

His testimony covers the gap left by his predecessor who, in appearing before the court in February, said while he had in 2019 conducted digital forensic examinations on the three handsets — a black Alcatel, a black Vonino XY10Z, and a Grey Samsung — he had not conducted any analysis to see where the audio on the phone originated. He told the court that he had not conducted a final analysis because of circumstances outside his control and that he had also left the JCF shortly after.