A high-stakes murder trial involving six sitting and former Jamaican police officers took a dramatic turn Wednesday, as defense attorneys launched a sustained attack on the credibility of sitting Agriculture Minister Floyd Green, one of the prosecution’s key eyewitnesses. Green, who took the witness stand in the Home Circuit Court, maintained his composure and stuck firmly to his account of the 2013 shooting that left three men dead.
The six officers on trial — Sergeant Simroy Mott, Corporal Donovan Fullerton, Constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards, Orandy Rose, and Richard Lynch — stand accused of murdering Matthew Lee, Ucliffe Dyer, and Mark Allen. The fatal incident unfolded on January 12, 2013, on Acadia Drive in St. Andrew. Initial official accounts framed the deaths as the outcome of a shootout between the three men and responding officers; one additional man reportedly fled the scene, and authorities say two illicit firearms were recovered from the site. Corporal Fullerton faces an extra charge of submitting a false statement to Jamaica’s Independent Commission of Investigations, the body that probes law enforcement misconduct.
Green, who was not in office at the time of the shooting, is one of only two civilian witnesses who claim to have observed parts of the incident. The minister has testified that he watched the events unfold from the bedroom window of his top-floor apartment, which sits at an elevation overlooking the crime scene.
Lead cross-examination was handled by defense attorney John Jacobs, who is part of the legal team representing the officers alongside co-counsel Hugh Wildman and Althea Grant-Coppin. Jacobs systematically questioned inconsistencies between Green’s initial testimony and crime scene evidence captured in photographs.
Early in the cross-examination, Jacobs called Green to account for his earlier claim that he saw a man of Indian descent standing outside a blue Mitsubishi Outlander, holding what looked to be vehicle registration papers. After Green confirmed that account, Jacobs pulled up a marked crime scene exhibit for the judge and jury to review, asking Green to point to any object matching the description of the papers in the photograph. When Green admitted he could not see the papers in the image, Jacobs pressed him to confirm he still stood by his original statement. Green clarified that his observation reflected what he saw on the day of the shooting, not what was visible in the post-incident photograph, reaffirming that he clearly saw the man standing by the vehicle’s passenger side with what he assumed were car papers. Jacobs directly accused the minister of lying under oath, a claim Green immediately rejected, stating he had been fully truthful with the court.
Jacobs next turned to Green’s claim that he saw a man wearing a white shirt sitting on the road behind the parked Mitsubishi. After Green pointed to the general area behind the vehicle on the photograph, Jacobs asked him to confirm he saw no blood-like discoloration in that spot, which Green did. When Jacobs directed his attention to a patch of discoloration on the adjacent sidewalk to the left of the vehicle, Green acknowledged the red staining. Jacobs put forward an alternative account: that the man in the white shirt was actually on the sidewalk, not the road, and that the parked Mitsubishi — which was left facing Barbican Road with both front doors propped open — would have blocked Green’s view of the road from his apartment window. Green pushed back, noting his apartment’s elevated position meant no obstacles blocked his line of sight, and repeated that he clearly saw the man in the white shirt on the road.
The cross-examination then turned to Green’s account of where the man of Indian descent’s body was located on the ground. Green confirmed he could see a second patch of discoloration on the sidewalk near the vehicle’s left front passenger door. When asked if this was the location he had previously referenced, Green stated he could only identify the general vicinity, noting that the man had been pulled from the vehicle and his body lay on the ground near the passenger door. When Jacobs challenged Green over previous markings on the exhibit that purported to show the exact location, Green clarified the marking was only ever intended to indicate a general area, not a precise spot.
The tense day of cross-examination wrapped up with Green standing by all core elements of his testimony. The high-profile trial is scheduled to resume proceedings on Thursday.