THE court heard from one witness in the fraud trial of former Education Minister Ruel Reid and his co-accused on Thursday, before defence attorneys again put submissions before Parish Court Judge Sanchia Burrell that the case be thrown out.

The first witness called to the stand was the brother of Reid’s former driver.

The soft-spoken witness told the court that he had worked at Jamaica College since 2007, whereas his brother, who is now deceased, had worked at the school as a watchman between 2006 and “about 2016” when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Under questioning from the Crown, he told the court that his brother had been in Reid’s service after his diagnosis in 2016 until 2019, before passing away in 2020.

He described in detail his brother’s death and burial before confirming for the court that a photo of his brother’s funeral programme was legitimate and had been submitted to the police by him.

His testimony was an attempt by the Crown to verify the driver’s identity.

The photo was admitted into evidence.

Under cross-examination by Hugh Wildman, who represents former president of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) Fritz Pinnock, the witness confirmed that the police officer who took his statement had not identified himself as an agent of the Financial Investigations Division (FID) or member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), but rather by his rank of inspector.

Wildman has contended in previous sittings that information collected by FID agents or authorised officers is inadmissible in court, and made submissions that on this basis that the trial should not proceed.

That submission was rejected by Burrell.

On Thursday, Wildman put forward another argument to claim that the case was “null”.

The court had been in the process of dealing with case management matters while waiting for a witness to arrive when the attorney pointed to the ‘Number One Information’ contained in the order of indictment.

He said the trial was null on the basis that this information grounding the indictment order only contained information relating to Reid and Pinnock.

He made the case that the indictment, endorsed by Burrell, had no information on other three co accused — Reid’s wife, Sharen Reid who served as senior manager of legal affairs at CMU; their daughter Sharelle Reid; and Jamaica Labour Party Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence, and as such they were “not properly before the court”.

“This trial insofar as those accused persons are concerned is a nullity, because the information that is endorsed only has Mr Pinnock and Reid. So there is non-compliance with section 272,” he said.

Wildman, who gave cases to support his answer, maintained that, given the strength of the authorities he cited, which are binding on the Parish Court, the trial should come to an end because the court was dealing with a jurisdictional error that only the Supreme Court can cure.

“We can’t have a situation where my client is on trial and evidence is being led against him in relation to people who are not before the court,” he said.

Attorneys Anthony Armstrong, who represents Ruel Reid; Shannon Clarke, who represents Sharen Reid; Carolyn Chuck, who represents Sharelle Reid; and Oswest Senior Smith, who represents Kim Brown Lawrence, concurred with Wildman.

Armstrong and Chuck made their own similar submissions to the court.

Burrell asked the defence on multiple occasions if they had read through the entirety of the Number One Information to which Chuck replied it was not served on them.

In response to the defence’s claims, the prosecution put forward that Number One Information serves as a basis for summons and/or warrants to be issued and bring a person before the court.

The prosecutors noted that the order of indictment made reference to at least 15 such documents in which all the defendants are named.

The Crown added that the responsibility of the court is to make an order for indictment after enquiry, and it could do so on any of multiple available Number One Information documents.

Burrell indicated that court would be adjourned and she would present her decision on the submissions on Friday.

Meanwhile, disclosure remains an issue in the trial, with defence attorney for Reid, Linda Wright, complaining that new submissions in the form of WhatsApp messages that she had not seen prior were recently made.

This resulted in an order from Burrell that the Crown make disclosures of all relevant documents via hard drive and via cloud sharing link by October 24.

The defendants had their bail extended to Friday, when court resumes.

The allegations in the case are that Reid and his co-accused — his wife Sharen, their daughter Sharelle; Brown Lawrence and Pinnock participated in a scheme that siphoned over $25 million in government funding from the Ministry of Education and CMU between 2016 and 2019.

Fritz Pinnock on his way to the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on Thursday, October 16.