Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterEAST KINGSTON businessman Danhai Williams is one of the witnesses the prosecution is expecting to call before it closes its case next week in the Kraal murder trial.
The prosecution intends to call Williams at the trial of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and five other policemen charged with the murder of four civilians at Kraal, Clarendon, on May 7, 2003.
Prosecutor Terrence Williams told the Home Circuit Court yesterday that the Crown was not calling eight of the witnesses on the back of the indictment.
However, Mr. Williams said he hoped to call four more witnesses from the back of the indictment and a few more witnesses subject to evidence to adduce.
He said the witnesses he intended to call were numbers 35, 36, 42 and 43 at the back of the indictment. Witnesses the prosecution intends to call are always listed on the back of the indictment which sets out the charges against an accused person. Checks by The Gleaner revealed that Williams' name is listed as 36.
Yesterday the prosecution asked for an early adjournment because two of its witnesses were unable to attend court due to illness. Prosecutor Williams said the witnesses would be available on Monday.
"Let me indicate that next week we are going to work," Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe said before the adjournment was granted. He said further "all I am saying next week everybody must put their house in order or the guillotine will be applied." He also enquired how ill the witnesses were, but Director of Public Prosecutions Kent Pantry, Q.C, said his colleagues received the information and were not able to give details as to their condition.
ISSUED PISTOL TO ACCUSED
Assistant Commissioner of Police Linval Bailey was one of the two witnesses called yesterday. He said in 1999 when he was head of the Special Anti-Crime Task Force he issued a Browning 9mm service pistol to accused Constable Patrick Coke. He produced the firearm register in court.
Cross-examined by attorney-at-law Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, who represents SSP Adams, he said crime went down in the first year of the operation of the now-disbanded Crime Management Unit which was headed by SSP Adams. He said crime went down by an even greater percentage the second year of its operation, but he could not say what the percentages were. He said the CMU was specifically set up to deal with guns, extortion and gangs.
Defence lawyers yesterday described as irrelevant the evidence which Tagmar Dixon, of the National Land Agency, gave in relation to maps of the island. Dixon said he supplied the maps to the police this year based on requests made by them. He said he placed five maps on a compact disc. The maps were tendered in evidence.
Defence lawyer Valerie Neita-Robertson said she did not see the relevance of the maps and the Chief Justice remarked, "I am of the same frame of mind."
