As they were being arrested, two of six cops on trial for the January 12, 2013 shooting deaths of three men proclaimed their innocence, a police sergeant who was given the task of arresting and charging the men testified in the Home Circuit Court on Thursday.

Constable Orandy Rose allegedly uttered, “The devil is a liar”, when he was arrested and charged with murder in 2019 along with five of his colleagues in relation to the January 12, 2013 shooting deaths of Matthew Lee, Ucliffe Dyer, and Mark Allen. The witness also said that Sergeant Simroy Mott, another of the six cops on trial, declared during his arrest, “Mi nuh murder nobody.” According to the witness, four of the cops — Corporal Donovan Fullerton, constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards and Richard Lynch — made no comment when they were arrested.

During cross-examination defence attorney Hugh Wildman asked the witness if Constable Rose actually said “the devil is a liar” when he was arrested in 2019. The witness answered in the affirmative.

Wildman then asked the witness, “Isn’t the devil a liar for true?”

That prompted the prosecution to object on the basis of the question being irrelevant.

Trial judge Justice Sonia Bertram-Linton appeared to agree and asked Wildman to move past that question.

The police sergeant also testified that he had proceeded to arrest the six cops in 2019 after a conversation with his then boss.

“I identified myself by showing them my Jamaica Constabulary Force ID and told them where I was from and that I was equipped with a warrant to charge them for murder. An additional charge was laid against Fullerton,” the witness said, explaining that Fullerton was also charged with making a false statement to the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom).

He also testified about the chain of custody for ballistics evidence in the case. He said that on May 4 this year, based on instructions he received from a deputy superintendent of police, he went to the Institute of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine where he reported to a ballistics expert. The witness told the court that he collected three brown envelopes from the expert. The brown envelopes were said to contain spent casings and bullet fragments.

“They were three small envelopes labelled P, Q, R. They were taken and handed over to Miss [Kathy-Ann] Pyke at the Home Circuit Court. I collected them on May 4 and handed them over to Miss Pyke,” he testified.

He said that two of envelopes — P and Q — were opened and their contents removed for him to view. The envelope labelled R was not opened and therefore he was not shown its contents. During cross-examination by Wildman, the witness said he did not speak to Pyke — the lead prosecutor in the case — before he went to the lab to collect the envelopes. He explained that his first time speaking to Pyke was when he came to court on May 4 this year to drop off the envelopes.

During cross-examination from John Jacobs, the witness said that after he was shown the contents of the envelopes and they were resealed, he did not open any of them before handing them over to Pyke.

The trial continues today.