Expert dismisses claim his investigation was shabby

A COMMUNICATION analyst who had presented evidence of numerous phone calls among accused members of the Clansman-One Dong Gang, including its two top alleged leaders who were behind bars, yesterday dismissed efforts by the defence to discredit his testimony.

The expert witness had disclosed that between January and August 2019, alleged gang leader Andre ‘Blackman’ Bryan had four numbers attributed to him, while Jason ‘City Puss’ Brown, the reputed deputy leader, had five numbers. Both men were said to have made and received several calls from three cell phones that were used by an ex-gang member to secretly record their conversations as well as chats with other alleged members.

The police sergeant also disclosed that majority of the phone calls that were made were made by the alleged gangsters in the downtown Kingston area and in Spanish Town, St Catherine, based on the cell site data, which further shows that the calls likely to have been placed from their respective remand facilities.

But the witness insisted yesterday that he was “standing by” his testimony after senior attorney-at-law Lloyd McFarlane suggested that it was unsafe for the court to rely on his pronouncements in light of certain inconsistencies.

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Bryan’s lead counsel, during his cross-examination, highlighted that the witness had submitted a first report with four telephone numbers attributed to the reputed gang leader, of which only two appeared on the report that was presented in court, which also had four numbers.

“Can you explain why there were different numbers attributed to Blackman at different times?” the lawyer asked.

The 25-year veteran cop explained that the first submission was a preliminary report and that the final report “confirmed what is applicable”.

“There were issues that were later corrected,” he added.

But McFarlane, who was not satisfied with his response, asked if the first set of numbers were wrong or if two were incorrect, but the witness told him that was not what he was saying.

“I recall that one of them was not properly attributed,” he explained.

“Or maybe none of them was properly attributed,” McFarlane quickly quipped.

The witness then pointed out that attribution may have been affected because of the reluctance of the witness in coming forward, but it would not mean that the number was incorrect.

McFarlane also took issue with the methods used by the witness in attributing the numbers to his client.

According to the witness, he had relied on text messages, witness statements, subscriber information and the phone contacts for three phones that were used to do the secret recording to do the attribution.

When the lawyer pressed him about whether he was able to personally verify the attribution, the witness admitted that he could not, conceding that the subscriber information from the telecommunications firms did not offer much assistance.

Meanwhile, the witness, under further cross-examination from attorney-at-law Kimani Brydson, admitted that the number he had attributed to defendant Owen Ormsby, using his alias ‘Micky’, was based solely on the contact list of the phone of the ex-gang member-turned-prosecution witness and was not supported by subscriber information from any of the two main telecommunications service providers.

Attorney-at-law Sasha Shaw, in challenging the attribution given to her client Joseph McDermott using his alias, implied that the witness had concocted that attribution.

She suggested to him that the name ‘Papa’ was not saved in any of the contact lists for the ex-gangster’s three phones.

But the witness disagreed, while maintaining that he recalled seeing it in one of the phones.

Bryan and 32 other alleged gang members are being tried on an indictment with 25 counts under the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organizations) Act and the Firearms Act.

The trail continues on Monday in the Home Circuit Court.