A judge on Friday started her directions to a jury in the trial of a police officer alleged to have misused the police computer system to gather ammunition against a rival in a love triangle.
Justice Cheryll Richards, KC, told the six-strong jury that the alleged victim had been emotional as she gave evidence and that Sergeant Keren Watson had said in evidence that she was “fighting for her life”.
“It is natural to have sympathy for one side or the other … but your personal feelings must not influence you one way or the other,” Richards said.
“You must approach the matter objectively, unemotionally and dispassionately. …
“What you must not put aside is your common sense. It’s one of the most important tools you are likely to have available to you in the course of your deliberations.”
She was speaking after Amelia Fosuhene, for the defence, and Earl Pinnock, for the Crown, completed their cases and summed up for the jury.
Pinnock said that defendant had carried out several name checks on the alleged victim on the police Records Management System and had viewed “a number of attachments, opening up attachments”.
He added that Watson had been “digging around, we say, for information that could be used to hurt her rival”, who was having an affair with a male colleague also involved with Watson.
Pinnock reminded the jury of his earlier comparison of “someone getting into your house and rummaging around for information”.
He said that Watson had looked at a string of reports and that she had viewed them for “a non-policing purpose” and that she had hidden her tracks to “disguise her real intent”.
Watson, who is suspended, has denied a charge of misconduct in public office between July 2019 and July 2020.
Fosuhene told the jury that they should not speculate to “fill gaps” where the prosecution had “not done their jobs, or the police have not done their jobs”.
She said it was the jury’s “duty” to return a not guilty verdict against Watson if they believed the Crown case had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Fosuhene added, “Ms. Watson did not follow anybody; Ms. Watson didn’t ask if she could come over and see someone in person.”
She insisted Watson had not acted out of jealousy and that it had been her who had been trying to say “no hard feelings”.
“Because the prosecution says it, it doesn’t necessarily make it true,” Fosuhene said.
“You have the evidence and you have heard the evidence. Go through the evidence, look at the evidence, but I am going to suggest that when you get to the motive and want to look at the motive of jealousy, it’s not what the prosecution tells you at all.”
She called into question evidence by the alleged victim, who admitted she had been “cheating on her husband”.
Fosuhene added, “That calls for lies. This has been going on at this point, when we get to 2020, since 2015.
“This was a five-year lie told to people she is supposed to be closest to – family. By her own admission she lied.”
Richards is expected to finish her directions to the jury on Monday.
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