MONTEGO BAY, St James – An outstanding statement from the police force’s Communications Forensic and Cybercrime Division (CFCD) was among the reasons cited for the need to push back the murder trial of a man accused of killing a teenager when the case came up for mention on Thursday.

The statement is vital to the case as the defence lawyer is challenging a claim, made by the father of the slain boy, that he witnessed his son’s killing on a surveillance camera.

Nashaun Rowe, 20, is charged with the January 22, 2021 murder of Chris-Jay Thompson, who was then 16. At the time of the incident, both men lived in Irwin Heights, St James.

Rowe was arrested after the father of the deceased told police that he saw Rowe shoot his son; however, the video footage is not available to the court. The court was not told, on Thursday, why the footage was unavailable.

That prompted defence lawyer Albert Morgan to raise concerns about the father’s identification of his client and his credibility. The Crown is relying on the father’s evidence.

During Thursday’s hearing in the St James Circuit Court, the Crown counsel informed the court that the arresting officer’s statement, as well as a statement from the CFCD, remained outstanding. In addition, the investigating officer was said to be on vacation.

The case was subsequently set for mention again on July 28 and Rowe’s bail was extended. Morgan’s request for a change in the reporting aspect of his client’s bail conditions was not granted.

According to police reports, about 6:45 pm on the day in question, Thompson was in his community when residents heard explosions. Upon investigating, residents found Thompson on a road with what appeared to be gunshot wounds. The police were called, and the boy was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Rowe was subsequently arrested and charged with murder and illegal possession of firearm and ammunition.

Both Chief Justice Bryan Sykes and Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn last week raised the issue of the impact that the backlog at the CFCD is having on the justice system.

On Tuesday, Sykes noted that more than 30 lottery scamming cases had to be closed since the start of the Trelawny Circuit Court last month due to long wait times for CFCD reports on electronic devices. He was also advised by the defence attorney representing murder accused Javan Garwood that it was only on Monday last week that she had received, from the prosecution, information regarding two phones with relevant evidence in the case stemming from the callous murder of Garwood’s stepmother two years ago.

The prosecutor told the court that the explanation she received from CFCD was “the volume of work they have there versus the shortage of personnel”.

However, Sykes was not impressed by the explanation.

“I don’t care about the volume of work. The court has a time standard; two years of point of entry to disposition. I don’t tell police how to do their work, and police can’t tell me how to do mine. So I don’t care about their volume of work. Their job is to get the work done within the time frame established by the courts,” he said.

In a quick reaction to the Jamaica Observer’s front-page story, DPP Llewellyn issued a media release on Wednesday outlining the resource constraints hobbling the CFCD. She noted that it was more than 50 scamming-related cases, and not the 30-plus the chief justice referenced, which had to be disposed in the period he referenced. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

According to the DPP, there were a number of cases on the Trelawny Circuit list dating from as far back as 2014 in which the only item outstanding on the file was the CFCD report.

She said that enquiries made by her office found that some of these cases had not even had an analyst within the department assigned to them.

“This meant that the process of extracting the information had not even commenced, and very often when the prosecutor enquired, in order to convey the information to the court, we were informed that there was no foreseeable timeline, which would cause embarrassment generally to the prosecution. Usually, we would be informed by CFCD that due to the exigencies, the extremely high workload, and limited resources they themselves at CFCD, notwithstanding their greatest efforts, were placed in an embarrassing position,” she said.

Llewellyn said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) and the CFCD have been in constant discourse over the years and interacting with different levels of the police force hierarchy to determine the best way forward. However, it was obvious that notwithstanding the best efforts of the police, “there are long-standing and entrenched issues that undermine their timely provision of reports in the lottery scam matters”.

Among these issues, she said, is the high turnover rate of highly qualified CFCD employees who are often lured away by more lucrative offers; their feelings that there is a lack of opportunity for career advancement within the CFCD; and the high case load which is becoming even more onerous as cyber-related cases increase.