KINGSTON, Jamaica – A man was on Monday freed of ammunition charges after his lawyers, King’s Counsel Peter Champagnie and Samoi Campbell, invited the judge to stop the case against their client on the basis the sole witness admitted to being dishonest.

Nico Hines, a 25-year-old labourer of Grants Pen in St Andrew, was charged by the police for being in possession and stock piling 51 rounds of ammunition.

According to the police who charged him, the discovery of the ammunition was made in the ceiling of Hines’s bedroom on April 3, 2024 following a raid.

In giving evidence in the Gun Court on Monday, the police also claimed that a magazine casing was also found in another part of the ceiling of Hines’s room after an additional search was conducted.

Under cross examination, however, Champagnie confronted the police with station diary entries that were made by the said police, making reference to the find of the magazine casing in the tenement yard of Hines near a foul coop.

In another diary entry it was noted that the magazine was found buried in the yard. When pressed by Champagnie as to whether what he wrote and signed to in in the station diaries were true, the police stated that they were untrue but that he was forced by another police to do it. When asked further by Champagnie if he would agree that knowingly making a false entry in station diary was dishonest, he admitted that it was dishonest.

Hines had denied having anything illegal in his room and claimed that police made the discovery of the ammunition and magazine buried in the tenement yard and that he did not know of their existence.

In bringing the case to a halt, the trial judge, Justice Vaughn Smith noted that the police’s evidence at the end of cross examination was left in tatters and it was an embarrassing moment for the honest members of the JCF.

IF found guilty, based on the new Firearms law, Hines would have been facing 15 to 20 years in prison. He had been in custody a few months before being offered bail.