Jury urged not to convict ‘wrong man’

(CNS): Shane Connor is an innocent man who has been “gravely wronged” by a poor investigation and unsatisfactory evidence that has placed him in the dock facing charges for a serious home invasion, his attorney told a jury Monday as he summed up his client’s defence.

Paul Keleher QC said that everyone is entitled to sleep safely in their beds at night but convicting the wrong man of a crime he didn’t commit won’t achieve that, and he urged the men and women of the jury not to trust the word of a lying criminal who wrongfully named Connor as the third man in a serious crime spree in June 2017, in which a couple were put through a terrifying ordeal.

When crown counsel Scott Wainwright summed up the prosecution’s case against Connor, he said the jury should be drawn to the conclusion that he was the third man in this aggravated burglary, for which two other men have already been convicted.

He said that when Caine Thomas, one of the accomplices, had given his evidence, he had told the court, “He knows the truth,” when answering questions about Connor’s involvement in the crime. Wainwright told the jury that, after hearing all the evidence, “you now know the truth”.

The prosecutor said there was nothing “untoward, sinister or improper” about accomplices giving evidence against each other during trials and that “it is not a conspiracy”, as Connor has claimed throughout the trial.

But Keleher, while falling short of supporting Connor’s claims of a conspiracy to frame him, did point to what he said were the failures of the police to secure evidence that could have exonerated him, such as the CCTV footage from a bar in East End that Connor has claimed would have shown he was there when the crime spree he is accused off began. The police also failed to take a statement from Connor’s father, who he says was with him in the bar.

There are also questions over how Connor’s phones were handled. He has claimed the police were in possession of one of his phones when he is alleged to have been sending messages to Elmer Wright, another man convicted in the same crime, about the incident and how the spoils were to be divided.

Connor claims the police never returned his phone and have not produced any evidence to say they did. The defence attorney also said the investigators failed to establish exactly whose hands the various phones were in when the many incriminating calls and messages were made.

Keleher asked the jury to see past Connor’s behaviour during the trial, including his lengthy tirades, which they may have found annoying. He asked them how they expected a man of Connor’s passion to behave, given that he had been wrongly charged, and said that even if he is his own worst enemy, it did not make him guilty.

He told the jury the third man in this robbery was still out there, as it was not Shane Connor.

Keleher said that until Caine Thomas, whom he described as a “devious, dishonest, criminal”, had changed his evidence for the third time and pointed the finger at Connor, there had not been enough evidence to charge his client. The trace of DNA on a glove could easily have been transferred to Connor innocently as he had lived near to the men involved in the crime. He said all of the evidence around the phones and messages was unsatisfactory and although the police had this information for more than two years, they still did not charge Connor.

It was well over two years after the crime that Connor was eventually charged based on Thomas’ testimony, which put him at a distinct disadvantage because all of the evidence that could have cleared his name was no longer available and time had distorted memories.

Keleher reminded the jury of the burden of proof, as he urged them to find Connor not guilty.

The case continues Tuesday, with directions from the presiding judge.