Police must stop tell lies!!!”
This was the assertion made by Attorney Grant Connell during a Court proceeding on Tuesday.
Connell levelled the accusation, … issued the call … during his cross-examination of a police witness and in his closing submissions on Tuesday, in a gun-related matter involving his client Calroy Hooper of Petit Bordel.
Hooper was acquitted on all charges.
The defendant was charged with possession of a .38 revolver, one .38 bullet and one .357 bullet all without licences. He was also charged with discharging a loaded firearm in a public place.
All four offences were reportedly committed on November 23, 2018.
The Prosecution’s case was that the police went to Hooper’s home at Petit Bordel to execute a search warrant following a report that he had discharged a loaded gun in a public place. Hooper was met at home lying face down and when the police asked him to get up he refused. He was lifted by one of the officers, but the defendant, on getting up, pulled a firearm from his crotch and threw it through a doorway leading outside of the house. The gun, which had contained the bullets, was retrieved by an officer.
The police witnesses told the Court that Hooper’s action was so quick that they were unable to draw their firearms.
Hooper opted not to give evidence.
Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delpleche, in his closing submissions on Tuesday, recalled that two prosecution witnesses and a defence witness had told the Court that they saw Hooper throw the gun through the doorway.
But Connell in his closing arguments, pointed out that when that defence witness, Leron McKenzie, was re-examined by him for clarification, McKenzie, who was at the house when the search was conducted, admitted to the Court that he saw Hooper throw something, but was not sure what it was.
Hooper had told the police that the gun and ammunition did not belong to him, and that what he threw away was “a piece of weed”.
Following McKenzie’s evidence to the Court last week Wednesday, the Court visited the scene at Hooper’s home. This was done in the absence of the media.
That visit seemed to have helped the defence’s case.
The lawyer pointed out, during his closing arguments, that an outside kitchen was directly in front of the doorway, through which the police witnesses said the gun was thrown.
He argued that it would have been physically impossible for the gun to be thrown from that angle and retrieved where the police had said it was retrieved.
Connell also noted that the evidence the police gave in court in relation to who was present when the firearm was retrieved, was at variance with what the officers pointed out at the scene.
Connell not only accused the police of lying, but pointed out that “this case shows that such visits to the scene for clarification on certain issues, should be a must from now”.
1 Comment
Police in SVG have spent the last twenty years emulating their leaders. If the minister in charge of the polices tells lies, blatant lies, some big, some small. Then the chief of police is encouraged to lie, then all the commissioned officers below him are encouraged to tell lies. the sergeant lies and the corporals think it it is the normal, so they tell lies, or agree with witness statements of other officers.
When PM Gonsalves told the Nation in the parliament that he tells lies, that means it is OK for everyone in government, the police, the diplomats. You can brand them all liars.
Time to cut out the cancer, the malignancy emanating from the ULP leadership. Time to cut them out and like the cancer tissue, destroy it, so as it exists no more.