J-Tornado drug trial adjourns until Aug. 17

Lawyers for accused cocaine dealers Shane Williams and Joshua Kindred announced they had no new witnesses to present Thursday morning, pushing the men's long-running drug trial into its next phase.

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"We do not have any further evidence to call," said Kindred's lawyer, Reid Chedore.

"Likewise," said Williams' lawyer, Brian Munro.

Crown prosecutors closed their case on Wednesday,65 days after they began.

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

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

The case is being heard by Justice William Grant,who previously said he wanted post-trial briefs from each side once all of the evidence was in.

He gave defence lawyers untilJuly 21to submit their ownand crown lawyers untilAug.5to respond, andset aside two final days for oral summations onAug. 17 and 19.

"Thatconcludesthis portion of the trial," said Justice Grant.

"We areadjourneduntil August 17."

Parade of officers

The trial, which is into its 10thweek, saw a parade of police officers, mostly with the RCMP, explain how they ran a final three-month-long sting on Saint John area drug suspects in the summer of 2014. Theyhireda local Saint John businessman, with close connections to Williams, to lay a trap.

The businessman, whose identity was protected by a publication ban despite objections raised by mediaorganizations, including the CBC, was promised nearly $600,000 to distribute cellphones to suspects, help with the collection of evidence and testify at trials.

Suspectswere led to believe the phones they were givenwere encrypted, and immune to police surveillance.

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

Between June and Aug.2014, police made selective arrests to cut off supplies of cocaine into Saint Johnand pressure suspects to search for new supplies,and then plot those purchases on their new phones.

Police also had the businessman make several buys of cocaine from suspects, totalling nearly onekilogram,so they could film and record the transactions.

The buys also forced suspects to resupplymore often, creating even more email traffic.But the defence claimthe sophisticated operation, which they estimated cost $11 million, collected very little direct evidence against Williams or Kindred.

'ferrarigang'and 'hummertime'

Although police believe the pair were behind the two cellphone code names"ferrarigang" and "hummertime,"that seemed to direct cocaineactivity, defence lawyers say too much of that belief was built on what police were being told by the businessman.

He was the major drug "kingpin" in the area, they claimed, and cleverly misdirected police to target a group of low-level and loosely-organised operators as though they were a large and sophisticated drug ring.

In fact, they claimed there was no real drug ring until police created it with their phone giveaway.

Mid-trial, Justice Grant acknowledged two of the central issues he must decide in the case are the overallcredibilityof the businessman and whether police gathered enough evidence to prove Williams andKindred were behind the emails sent by 'ferrarigang' and 'hummertime.'