Tension flared in the Home Circuit Court on Tuesday as Agriculture Minister Floyd Green clashed with defence attorney Hugh Wildman during the murder trial of six policemen, with the politician bristling at suggestions about his credibility and repeated references to his role in Government.

Green is one of two alleged eyewitnesses to parts of the January 12, 2013 shooting incident on Acadia Drive in Barbican, St Andrew which left Matthew Lee, Mark Allen and Ucliffe Dyer dead.

On trial for murder are Sergeant Simroy Mott, Corporal Donovan Fullerton, and constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards, Orandy Rose, and Richard Lynch. Corporal Fullerton is also charged with making a false statement to the Independent Commission of Investigations.

It is alleged that cops were conducting an operation when they signalled the driver of a blue Mitsubishi Outlander motor vehicle to stop. It was further alleged that when the vehicle stopped, men alighted to challenge the police in a gunfight, during which Lee, Allen, and Dyer were killed.

Two illegal firearms — an Arcus 9mm pistol and a Mac 11 submachine gun — were allegedly seized from the men.

A fourth man was said to have escaped.

Based on photographs shown in court, the Mitsubishi Outlander, with the two front doors opened, was parked on Acadia Drive, very close to its intersection with Evans Avenue.

At the time of the incident, Green lived on the top floor of a multi-storey apartment complex on Acadia Drive. The minister had testified that he watched some of the events from a window in his bedroom.

While pointing to a photograph of the crime scene, Wildman asked Green to tell the court whether he viewed the incident from an elevated and angular view based on what was depicted on a photograph shown to the seven-member jury.

“Wouldn’t that be looking up the road?” Wildman asked.

“I would be looking down and across,” Green responded.

“Mr Green, you are a government minister, is that correct?” Wildman asked.

The question did not sit well with the minister who warned the attorney saying, “Mr Wildman, don’t go back down this road.”

“It has to do with your credibility,” Wildman responded.

“My credibility is unassailable,” Green shot back, then added: “If I am positioned at the window, I would be positioned as you see.”

Wildman countered: “Whatever position you took there, wouldn’t you be looking at an angle to see the Outlander, Mr Green, as a minister of Government?”

Green, who appeared annoyed, said, “Mr Wildman, again, your reference to minister of Government serves no purpose”.

“Yes, it does,” Wildman quipped.

Green, though, refused to yield, saying, “It does not, so I will say to you again, stop.”

At this point prosecutor Kathy-Ann Pyke stood up to address trial judge Sonia Bertram-Linton saying, “Milady, I think this is an argument beginning.”

Betram-Linton told Pyke that she was not going to tell Wildman how to conduct his cross-examination of the witness.

Wildman then asked Green if he could appreciate that there is a stark difference between looking straight across as opposed to looking up the road.

“Mr Wildman, I will say it again, how I was positioned, I would call it looking across,” Green replied.

Green, who was recalled as a witness last Friday, had appeared in the trial previously in January as the first witness in the case.

On Tuesday, Wildman asked him if he had said, during his testimony in January, that from where he was positioned he could see a man in a white shirt lying on the ground behind the Mitsubishi Outlander with blood on his chest.

“I said I saw his shirt. He had on a white shirt and I saw his shirt,” Green responded.

Wildman quizzed the minister on whether in January he had said that he saw blood in the region of the man’s chest.

Pyke objected to Wildman’s question, saying, “Nothing about the chest. It was about shirt. He spoke about the shirt.”

Even Justice Bertram-Linton did not recall the witness saying anything in his testimony about blood on the slain man’s chest.

However, Pyke’s objection prompted John Jacobs, another member of the defence team — which also comprises Althea Grant-Coppin — to pull his notes from January.

“It was on the 30th of January, Milady. It said the bloodstain was to his chest area and the witness illustrated using his right hand to touch his left breast,” Jacobs said.

A peeved Jacobs had to kindly ask Pyke to refrain from interrupting the defence team and trying to instruct on how to conduct their cross-examination as well as how to interpret the evidence in the case.

“Please let me talk to the judge,” Jacobs said in his appeal to Pyke, who was seated.

At that moment Wildman jumped to his feet, telling the judge: “We have a muttering maniac here, milady.”

After going through her notes, Bertram-Linton found where Green told the court that he saw blood on the shirt in the chest area.

Despite clarity being brought to the situation, Pyke would not relent.

“That’s not what Mr Wildman said [earlier] that the witness said he saw blood on the man’s chest. That is a different thing, Milady. The witness was very clear that he saw the shirt that had blood on it. That’s a different thing,” she insisted.

Wildman, who appeared confused by Pyke’s explanation, said, “Insulting the intelligence of the jury is what you are doing.”

Wildman then diverted his attention from Pyke and back to the witness, pressing him further about the blood on the shirt.

“Mr Green, did you say in your evidence that from where you were in that apartment building, you saw blood in the chest area of the man on the ground behind the Outlander motor vehicle?”

Green responded: “I indicated that I saw what appeared to be blood on the shirt of the man in the vicinity, as you have said, of the chest.”

Wildman then asked: “That is correct, and you are telling the jury that from where you are on the top floor, the man is sitting behind the Outlander on the ground and you saw that?”

An annoyed Green began to respond, saying “Mr Wildman,” but before he could finish, Wildman cut him off, telling him to stop repeating his name because everyone already knew it.

The judge was not amused.

“Mr Wildman, now you are being rude. Please, Sir, you have to just stay within the canons,” the judge said.

Wildman insisted that there was no need for Green to repeat his name.

The judge told Wildman that his tone was not correct and asked him to change it.

The trial continues today with Green facing more cross-examination.

WILDMAN… insisted there was no need for Green to repeat his name