Two men’s appeal against conviction in connection to a 2009 shooting continued yesterday with the Crown arguing the conviction should be upheld.

Sanchey Grant and Jahmel Blakeney were sentenced to 30 years behind bars for attempting to kill Shaki Minors and his pregnant girlfriend Renee Kuchler, who were both shot multiple times while leaving the Southside Cinema in St David’s.

While both survived the attack, Ms Kuchler lost her unborn child as a result of the injuries suffered and Mr Minors suffered lasting numbness in his fingers due to the attack.

Blakeney and Grant were arrested in the hours following the shooting after running through a police roadblock in St David’s.

Prosecutors alleged that Blakeney had masterminded the attack after seeing the victims at the cinema, while Grant was the gunman.

The shooting was allegedly committed as payback for a shooting a week earlier in which members of the Parkside gang were targeted.

Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Cindy Clarke told the court that while Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves had commented that he did not see how one defendant could be acquitted and the other convicted given the specifics of the case, he did so only after giving jurors directions to consider each defendant’s case independently.

“It was always before the jury that Grant was the shooter and Blakeney assisted Grant,” Ms Clarke said. “This portion of the summation, while it isn’t the sort of thing that I would have wanted the judge to say, it’s not the type of thing that would cause the outcome to be different.”

Regarding the ground of appeal that Mr Justice Greaves had “changed tact” during his directions, Ms Clarke said: “He posed scenarios where Blakeney might have been assisting someone else or Grand had different involvement, but at the end what was left was the Crown’s case.”

Asked if the judge should have spoken with the lawyers about the scenarios before making them in his directions, Ms Clarke said it would have been ideal but the failure to do so does not bias the case against the defendants.

She also dismissed the assertion that the judge had cherry picked the evidence of eye witnesses to the shooting, saying he pointed out discrepancies and gave proper directions as to how the jury should treat those discrepancies.

Ms Clarke also said that the court was correct to allow “opinion evidence” from Jalicia Crockwell, who had said Blakeney had left the theatre in the evening before the shooting because he saw someone.

“It was not her opinion,” Ms Clarke said. “It was the view she came to based on what she herself witnessed.”

While Charles Richardson and Craig Attridge, representing Blakeney and Grant respectively, had argued that gang evidence used to suggest motive was more prejudicial than probative, Ms Clarke said the evidence had emerged from Mr Minors during his examination in chief. When questioned as to why someone would want to hurt him, he said he had been affiliated with 42, which had at the time of the shooting been engaged in a feud with Parkside.

She also argued against the suggestion that gunshot residue component particles found on Grant’s hand and a plastic bag in his bedroom should not have been admitted, saying the evidence was “indicative” of GSR.