Closing Arguments Presented during Attempted Murder Trial
Both the Prosecution and the defense presented their closing speeches to jurors during Kyari Flood’s attempted murder trial in Supreme Court yesterday.
Mr. Flood himself took the stand on Friday, March 18 and told jurors that he had nothing to do with the shooting of the case’s complainant on March 24, 2020. Due to the complainant being a witness in this case, their name cannot be published for legal reasons.
Maria Sofianos, for the Crown, urged jurors to keep in mind and compare the way that Mr. Flood answered questions posed by his lawyer Marc Daniels versus how he answered questions posed by herself.
In her opinion, the evidence that Mr. Flood presented while he was on the stand contrasts with that which is contained within his defense statement. During her cross-examination of Mr.Flood, she suggested that those differences were present because he was trying to make his evidence fit with that from the Crown.
During this trial, jurors heard testimony from two civilian witnesses, one of them being the main complainant and the other stating that Mr. Flood, whom they had known since he was a baby, came into their home and pointed a firearm in their face. The witness told the Court that they knew that it was Mr. Flood, because they knew the way his eyes looked and were shaped.
“ We are saying that the defendant could not go further down the steps of the home after his eyes had locked with [the witness],” Ms. Sofianos told jurors. “ Him not moving further down the steps made the witness sure that it was him.”
“ We say that each piece of circumstantial evidence a strand that, taken together as a whole, draws the conclusion that this defendant is guilty of the offenses charged,” Ms. Sofianos concluded.
In his closing speech, Mr. Marc Daniels asked jurors if the aforementioned witness could truly identify the gunman as Mr. Flood at the time that she saw him in her home, or if they are putting those pieces together after the fact.
Mr. Daniels also highlighted that, according to the witness’ own testimony, Mr. Flood’s face was covered from the top of the nose, down and they said he was either wearing a helmet or a hoodie.
“ [If] you combine a mask and a hood, or a mask and helmet and think about what impact that has on an ability to truly assess when you can’t see anything else, in a manner of seconds, if you can be sure that you saw what you saw,” he posed to the jurors. “What if what they thought they saw was actually incorrect?”
“ When interviewed by the police [the night that the shooting occurred], the witness said they could not be 100 percent sure that it was the defendant [in their home],” he said. “ This is a question mark that says, if they are not 100 percent sure how can you [the jury] be expected to feel sure?”
Mr. Flood, 22, is also charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to the complainant and using a firearm to commit an indictable offense. Jurors are expected to deliberate Mr. Flood’s guilt or innocence tomorrow.
Story by TNN Reporter Stefano Ausenda
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