Prosecutor Kathy-Ann Pyke on Monday explained to High Court Judge Sonia Bertram-Linton why she has been fixated on trying to have details of a particular spent casing verified in the murder trial of six policemen.

The cops are on trial for murder in relation to the January 12, 2013 shooting deaths of Matthew Lee, Ucliffe Dyer, and Mark Allen on Acadia Drive in Barbican St Andrew.

It is alleged that the police signalled the driver of a blue Mitsubishi Outlander motor vehicle to stop. It was said that when the car stopped, men alighted from it to challenge cops in a gun battle. The cops, who have maintained that they were acting in self-defence, returned fire, killing the three men.

Since last week, Pyke had been trying to get Bertram-Linton to instruct the ballistics expert from the Government Forensic Laboratory to take the spent casing of a 5.56 mm bullet for additional scrutiny to determine which cop fired that bullet.

Defence attorneys, who insist that the cops admitted to firing their weapons, believe that Pyke was employing a strategy to drag out the trial, which began in January.

On Monday, during a special submission, Pyke stuck to her argument that the spent casing was important.

“To say where the spent casing was, is very important. We have evidence from the six policemen saying they were at the scene and they fired,” Pyke said, adding that the first witness, Agriculture Minister Floyd Green, gave evidence that he saw six policemen with guns pointed at them.

That prompted defence attorney Althea Grant-Coppin to raise an objection.

Grant-Coppin said at no point did the witness, who took the stand in January, say he saw cops firing.

Green had told the court that he did not see the police shoot any of the men, but said he saw when they became motionless.

“There was no evidence that was led where any witness saw a single police officer fire at the scene. If there is, I would like my friend to point it out to me,” Grant-Coppin said.

Pyke continued, saying that the evidence showed that the six cops in fact fired.

“There is an accumulation of the evidence which will show you who fired and who did not fire and the role they played. I believe that from the analyst, there was evidence that all the service pistols that came into him had been fired on the day. As it regards to specific detailing of who fired, we know that policemen reported that they were fired upon and they returned fire. There were particularly detailing of who said they fired and who did not,” Pyke said.

She told the court that in the interest of fairness she thought it would help if the expert did a further review to see if he could tell the court which gun the spent casing came from.

The trial continues Tuesday.