Who is popular today?

PROSECUTORS were yesterday thrown another curve ball regarding the recorded conversations between alleged gangsters, which were last week entered into evidence in the ongoing trial of 33 alleged members of the St Catherine-based Klansman gang.As it stands the crown will have to on Thursday make legal submissions to satisfy the tribunal that the phones used in the recording of those conversations meets the admissibility standards under the Evidence Amendment Act 2015.The issue arose after several admissions made by a cyber incident response specialist, who resumed testifying this morning after taking the stand on Thursday for the first time. At that time the expert witness told the court that he in 2019 conducted digital forensic examination on the three handsets, a black Alcatel, a black Vonino XY10Z and a grey Samsung which are key to the matter, and that he produced a report following the examination of the gadgets. He further identified the three cellular phones and the compact discs to which he had downloaded the audio files held on the phones, as well as the fourth and final compact disc which was a compilation of all the audio files. All the items were successfully tendered and admitted into evidence Thursday.However, on Monday, in being asked by Chief Justice Bryan Sykes whether he had done any analysis to see where the audio on the phone originated, the expert witness said he had not done so.According to the witness, this was because the compact disc that he prepared had actually been done to get feedback from the investigator, hence the reason it was marked "not for court".He said upon receiving that feedback, the in-depth analysis would have been conducted which would encompass the details the chief justice was querying.According to the witness, the results of that analysis would then have been presented in the final report in order to produce a final evidence package, which is what would have been presented to the court.He however told the court that in this case that the final analysis was not done by him, as he did not get the complete feedback from the investigator in order to create the final evidence package.According to the expert, he left the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) before the feedback was given.Asked further by the chief justice if he would have been able to determine whether the software that was used was functioning properly or malfunctioning at the time of the recording, the witness said yes but admitted that he had made no connection between the audio recordings and the software in his analysis. He said his report was just based on the extraction of the devices so that the investigating officer could indicate the specific files that were important to the case."This is nothing short of remarkable, this is shorthand work, it's shorthand work," the chief justice said yesterday.The chief justice in calling the attention of prosecutors to the Evidence Act said they would have to satisfy the court that the phones fell under the definition of computer and whether so far all the evidence that has been heard in that respect meets the requirements of the section.The section states "subject to the provisions of this section, in any proceedings, a statement in a document or other information produced by a computer shall not be admissible as evidence of any fact stated or comprised therein unless it is shown that (a) there are no reasonable grounds for believing that the statement is inaccurate because of improper use of the computer; and (b) at all material times the computer was operating properly, or if not, that any respect in which it was not operating properly or was out of operation was not such as to affect the production of the document or the accuracy of its contents.Computer under the section is defined as any device or group of interconnected or related devices, one or more of which, pursuant to a programme, performs the automatic process of data and includes any data storage facility or electronic communications system directly connected to or operating in conjunction with such device or group of such interconnected or related devices.The chief justice resurrected the issue shortly again shortly after prosecutors placed on the stand a detective corporal attached to the anti-gang unit within the Counter Terrorism and Organised Crime (CTOC) branch of the JCF, who was recalled in relation to the transcripts of those telephone conversations which have so far only been marked for identification. The prosecutor who was to elicit that evidence under probing from the chief justice indicated that it was the crown's intention to have the officer testify, so as to have the portion of the transcripts of which she would give evidence admitted into the court's records.This however was not to be as the chief justice again pointed prosecutors to the section of the Evidence Act."That is where we will have to have further discussions in relation to section 31G because my understanding is that we have recordings and the recordings were transcribed, so the real content is not so much the transcripts - as helpful as that is - the content is really the recordings. So, the question is, those recordings that were made, firstly, is the admissibility governed by section 31G of the Evidence Act? If not, why not? if yes, have the recordings met the legal standards established by section 31G?" the trial judge said.The Crown in requesting time from the court to provide a response said it would do so this Thursday at 2:00 pm when the matter resumes. Following those submissions, the chief justice will rule.Witness number one, a former gang member turned crown witness, had testified that he turned over to the police three phones, two of which were given to him by the cops, with recordings of conversations between himself and members of the gang, including alleged leader Andre "Blackman" Bryan. The witness who said he started working with the police undercover in 2018 while Bryan was incarcerated to help dismantle the gang, said the third handset was given to him by a member of the gang on Bryan's orders.He said he downloaded a call recording app to automatically tape multiple cellphone conversations which were also saved. He forwarded the recordings to cops when the memory became full.