The jury in the attempted murder trial of Sheldon Brown heard closing speeches on Friday, first from Andrew Radcliffe QC on behalf of the Prosecution, then from Paul Purnell QC on behalf of the Defence.
When Mr. Justice Dale Sanderson began his charge to jurors afterwards, he pointed out that they could take account of the speeches, but they were not bound to accept what was said.
Neither did they have to accept his views on the evidence if they did not agree. He is the judge of the law, but they are the judges of fact, he explained.
Mr. Radcliffe, in summing up the Crown’s case, said it was common ground that the complainant, Fernando Martin, was deliberately shot on the night of 17 August 2004 and whoever shot him bore a serious grudge against him.
When police went to the defendant’s home several hours later, they found a suitcase packed and ready to go and Sheldon told them he was thinking of leaving.
When Sheldon was told that the man he was accused of shooting was still alive, he started to cry and vomited. There was some issue as to the time these things occurred, Mr. Radcliffe noted. But why should learning someone was alive bring a grown man to tears and cause him to vomit? The reaction was involuntary, Mr. Radcliffe submitted, produced by shock that the man he shot was alive.
On Sheldon’s left hand, on his shirt and on the car in his wife’s name, there was gunshot residue.
These are facts, open to interpretation, Mr. Radcliffe said. Earlier he had pointed out that gunshot residue by itself could not prove guilt. What it did was provide clear and compelling support of Fernando’s evidence that it was Sheldon who shot him.
In many ways the complainant was an unattractive character. And if he didn’t want to answer a question he simply said he didn’t remember, Mr. Radcliffe commented.
The jurors might not like the complainant. If so, good, because that meant their judgment would not be clouded by sympathy.
Sheldon had said he had nothing against Fernando. Was that the truth or a lie? It was entirely on the basis of an allegation by Fernando that Sheldon was arrested and put in custody in March 2004. The fact that Sheldon was then acquitted made it worse, Mr. Radcliffe submitted, because Sheldon claimed that Fernando had falsely accused him.
The Defence had suggested that two men, against whom Fernando had given police a statement, might have wished him harm. But they were in custody when Fernando was shot.
An accepted expert, Mr. Michael Martinez, had been called by the Crown to explain gunshot residue and give his opinion in this case.
He had found five microscopic particles of gunshot residue on Sheldon’s T-shirt, two particles on Sheldon’s hand.
There were four possibilities as to how the residue gets on a person’s hand: the person fired a gun; he touched it after it was fired; he was in close proximity when it was fired; there was cross-contamination from another source.
Mr. Martinez had said it was unusual to find as many as ten particles; five particles on the T-shirt was totally consistent with the Crown’s case, Mr. Radcliffe said.
Was the shirt contaminated? If the jurors accepted the evidence of the officer who said he found it, he was beyond reproach in the way the shirt was handled. If the shirt was contaminated, it must have been from inside the laundry basket, Mr. Radcliffe said.
He referred to the Defence position that the residue was the result of cross-contamination. But for that to occur, jurors would have to assume that an armed Uniform Support Group officer had particles on him. Then when he got in the USG vehicle, particles dropped from him and Sheldon sat in the exact seat when transported from his home to the George Town Police Station.
That would be innocent contamination. But Sheldon also ran a defence of deliberate contamination by officers who planted this evidence.
Mr. Radcliffe commented that Sheldon had been reluctant to make allegations against any specific officer, but logic dictated that it had to be one or more who had access to the exhibits. Any deliberate contamination would have had to involve the one officer Sheldon considered to be a man of complete integrity.
The only reasonable explanation for the gunshot residue was that Sheldon was the gunman, Mr. Radcliffe argued.
The defendant’s wife’s car was part of the whole picture, he added. That was the car Sheldon drove from the Cayman Islander Hotel, where the shooting had taken place. Two microscopic particles of gunshot residue had been found inside.
Sheldon had told the jury he had not driven the car since the day he had been released from custody on 3 August, two weeks before Fernando was shot. But one of his own witnesses had said she saw him driving the car three or four days before.
Mr. Radcliffe also commented on the evidence of Sheldon’s wife. He said it was natural that she was desperate to help her husband. The Crown said she was lying, but she should not be judged too harshly.
In closing, Mr. Radcliffe told the jurors that if they accepted Sheldon’s defence, they would have to accept a whole series of coincidences.
Before Sheldon’s apartment was searched, Fernando had told police it was Sheldon who shot him and was wearing a blue shirt at the time. The police found a blue shirt in a laundry basket at Sheldon’s apartment and it had gunshot residue on it.
Then there was the residue on the back of Sheldon’s dominant hand and in the car associated with him. Were these just coincidences or did they really expose the truth of the situation? he asked.
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