Saint John's J-Tornado trial plays weekend catch-up

The sun may have been shining outside the Saint John Law Courts on Saturday, but those involved with the drug trial of Shane Williams and Joshua Kindred weren't among those to enjoy it as court sat on the long weekend in attempt to make up for lost time.

Originally, six weeks had been set aside for the high profile case,but now at the end of its fourth week, it's behind schedule. Part of the reason is the Crown's decision to seek a publication ban on the identity of its star witness. CBC News lawyers lost a challenge against the ban, but the trial was delayed a week while that decision was made, and for the past two Saturdays there have been attempts to catch up.

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Twenty-eight people were arrested on Sept. 10, 2014, during a series of raids across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec as a result of Operation J-Tornado.

Williams, of Smithtown, and Kindred, of Saint John, who are both in their 30s, are both on trial in Saint John's Court of Queen's Bench on drug possession, drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. But the co-accused will also face a second trial on even more serious charges related to organized crime.

The unusual Saturday morning proceedings began with data analyst Corey Adams. He was in charge of sifting through hundreds of emails intercepted by police during the investigation. The were enough messages to produce 22 volumes of thick bound books. When Adams was finally finished verifying their authenticity, he was partially hidden behind a small wall of books laid out on the desk in front of him.

Objected to relevance

The Crown spent more than an hour going over how Adams had presented the decrypted messages. Once complete, lawyer Brian Munro, who is representing Williams, objected to their relevance. Munro argued that Adams wasn't knowledgeable about the substance of the messages and thought it was better suited to be presented when the police informant takes the stand next week. Justice William Grant disagreed. "There could be no better time" to enter the evidence, he said.

Munro shifted gears to an intense cross-examination of Adams over the accuracy of the data. During the investigation, Adams identified "unusual activity" with some of the phones supplied by the police agent to the suspects. Munro argued the fact that some messages did not go through and spam emails inexplicably ended up on the secure server suggested the phones were problematic. Adams said while there may have been some anomalies, theydidn't discredit the data collected.

While the technical nature of the messages was scrutinized for hours, the substance of them was barely mentioned.

Surveillance footage

Another civilian witness to take the stand Saturday was Benoit Caissie, who was involved in copying surveillance footage during the investigation. The footage was captured from several cameras set-up around the police informant's home. During cross-examination, Munro questioned Caissie about who had access to the cameras.

A third witness was also supposed to begin testimony Saturday, but time ran out. The trial will resume on Tuesday morning.

The star witness, a former restaurant owner hired by police to collect evidence, is expected to appear this week.