By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

THE Court of Appeal has quashed the firearm and ammunition convictions of Keno Stubbs, ruling that a magistrate failed to grapple with major contradictions in the evidence of the two police officers whose testimony formed the backbone of the prosecution’s case.

The appellate court said Magistrate Lennox Coleby did not give adequate reasons for accepting the officers’ evidence despite clear inconsistencies on critical points, including where the officers were standing when they claimed to have seen Stubbs, what kind of tree or stump the gun was allegedly hidden in, and how the weapon was retrieved.

The court found that the omission made the verdict unsafe.

Stubbs had been convicted on February 13, 2024, of possession of an unlicensed firearm and possession of ammunition. He was sentenced that same day to four years in prison on the firearm charge and two years on the ammunition charge, to run concurrently.

The prosecution’s case was that, on January 1, 2021, police officers, acting on information, went to house number 17 Hamilton Street with a search warrant. According to the Crown’s case, two officers later went to the rear of the property, where they claimed they saw Stubbs come out of the house with a firearm in his right hand and place it in a tree in the yard. He was then arrested and charged.

The magistrate accepted the prosecution’s case, describing the police witnesses as credible and competent and their evidence as cogent and compelling. He also found that the defence had not discharged the evidential burden placed on it under the Firearms Act.

But the Court of Appeal said the record showed significant contradictions in the officers’ accounts on matters that went to the heart of the case.

One officer said he and another officer were in a neighbouring yard, separated from Stubbs’ yard by a fence, when they saw the accused with the firearm. He described the tree as taller than the house and full of branches. He also said the appellant climbed a little before placing the gun in the tree and that the senior officer later climbed the tree to retrieve it.

The other officer gave a sharply different version. He said they never left Stubbs’ yard and that there was no fence between them and the accused. He described the location where the gun was hidden not as a large tree but as what appeared to be a coconut tree that had been thrown down and partially cut in half, with no branches. He said he did not climb a tree in the ordinary sense, but instead reached into the trunk or stump and recovered the weapon.

The appellate judges said those conflicting descriptions were not minor. They said it was difficult to understand how the two main witnesses could differ so sharply on evidence of such importance in a case that depended largely on their direct eyewitness testimony.

The court also found that the magistrate failed to address those discrepancies both when rejecting a no-case submission and when delivering his final ruling. It said a tribunal of fact had a duty to consider the case as a whole, including contradictory evidence, and explain how it resolved those issues before convicting.

While Stubbs raised other complaints on appeal, including arguments about the search warrant, the wanted poster, delay, note-taking, and claims that he was not told of his right to appeal, the court rejected those grounds.

The judges said any issues surrounding the search warrant did not affect the outcome because the prosecution's case did not depend on evidence found through the warrant. Instead, it rested on the officers’ claim that they directly saw Stubbs with the firearm. The court also found no merit in the complaint that the magistrate failed to advise Stubbs of his appeal rights, saying the record showed that he did.

The appeal first came before the court as an application for an extension of time to appeal. The judges granted that extension in the interests of justice before considering the substantive case.

Having found the convictions unsafe, the court allowed the appeal and quashed them. Because of that ruling, it said there was no need to consider Stubbs’ separate challenge to the sentence.