Crown closes case in J-Tornado trial after 65 days

Crown prosecutors in the long-running drug trial of Shane Williams and Joshua Kindred read dozens of intercepted emails into the court record Wednesday and then closed their case against the accused, 65 days after they began.

"The crown's evidence is all before the court," lead prosecutor Nicole Poirier told Justice William Grant.

Williams, 34, and Kindred, 39, are jointly on trial for drug possession, drug trafficking and conspiracy.

The case is being heard by Justice Grant alone.

The two were among 28 arrested by police in September 2014 as part of Operation J-Tornado, a three-year long investigation into drug trafficking in New Brunswick.

Police managed to put dozens of RCMP-supplied BlackBerry cellphones into the hands of New Brunswick drug suspects, who were led to believe they were encrypted and immune to police surveillance.

Instead emails from the phones were routed directly through RCMP servers, with over 30,000 messages intercepted andanalysedby police.

The crown has established that cocaine activity in the group was largely directed by two phones, one connected to the email addressferrarigang@cryplock.netand one connected tohummertime@cryplock.net.

Emails read

In courtWednesday, Melanie Ferron read out a number of emails between the two as they discussed bringing a kilo of cocaine to Saint John from Montreal on August 14, 2014.

"Ferrarigang" and "hummertime" discuss the $71,000 cost of the delivery and arrange to gather the money together.

They discuss how they will divide the kilo between them when it arrives, andwhen the cocaine is instead intercepted by police at the New Brunswick border, the two trade several emails discussing what went wrong.

More significantly, police say before the seizure when "hummertime" is told to deliver his share of the money for the delivery to a third suspect, Robert White, in a Tim Horton's parking lot, a surveillance team then records Kindred arriving in the parking lot and handing a bag to White.

"Ferrarrigang@cryplock.netis Shane Williams," Ferron told the court. "Hummertime@cryplock.netis Josh Kindred."

But defence lawyers dispute there is enough evidence to prove those email code names belong to the two men.

Kindred's lawyer, Reid Chedore, called the emails "vapours" that the crown was attempting to "glue together" in an attempt to build a case that lacked direct evidence.

Chedore saidno one has testified they saw Kindredtakepossessionof a BlackBerry or use one.

He and Williams' lawyer Brian Munro said they would announce whether they have more evidence to present Thursday morning.