Prosecution closes case in Collymore murder trial
Defence lawyers expected to file no-case submissions today
THE prosecution on Tuesday closed its case in the murder trial of Omar Collymore and his co-accused Michael Adams, Shaquilla Edwards, and Dwayne Pink in the Home Circuit Court.
At the same time, defence attorneys for the accused are expected tomake no-case submissions on behalf of their clients when the trial resumes today.
The four are on trial for the January 2, 2018 murders of Simone Campbell-Collymore and taxi operator Winston Walters. Campbell-Collymore and Walters were murdered by two men who hopped from the back of motorcycles before pumping bullets into Walters’ motor vehicle, killing the two occupants.
It is alleged that the four men conspired or helped to plan the murder of Campbell-Collymore on the instructions of her husband, Omar Collymore.
It was also alleged that the price tag that was placed on Campbell-Collymore’s head was $2 million.
The actual shooters in the double murder were Wade Blackwood, a prosecution witness who is now serving time for the crime, and a man who goes by the name Jim Brown. Jim Brown was said to have been an community enforcer from Brooke Valley, St Andrew. He was killed during a confrontation with police.
On Tuesday, before closing the prosecution’s case, prosecutor Andrea Martin Swaby cross-examined an information technology shared services director of Digicel, having him explain how call data is recorded and stored by the telecommunications company.
The Digicel employee of 23 years told the court that call data records are compiled and stored automatically.
“When a phone call is made, it is an automated process. Based on the volume, it has to be automated. Once data gets into the system, it doesn’t change. All our court processing officers only have read-only access,” he said.
In relation to call data records presented by a police expert, the employee, when asked whether an error caused information on cell towers for some of the calls to be missing, said, “Missing information does not necessarily mean an error. It is possible that the cell site record is not available. There are different teams which check accuracy of data and if errors are generated, they work on that.”
Deputy Superintendent of Police Maurice Goode was recalled to the witness stand to be re-examined for evidence he previously gave during the trial. Goode is assigned to the Communication Forensic and Cyber Crime Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the department which is responsible for analysing the call data records provided by telecommunications companies.
Data presented to the court earlier by Goode suggested that Collymore and co-accused, Michael Adams attempted to or communicated with each other on the phone almost 2,000 times leading up to the murders. However, it was revealed that some of the records were duplicates, as communication was made on two separate telecommunications networks and the records reflected calls and text messages that were pulled by both providers. He explained that the formula used by each company to calculate call times is different.
“It would not be safe to say it is an error. It is just how the system produces the data,” Goode said after being asked by defence lawyer Sasha-Kay Shaw if the information was accurate.