A recording taken from a defendant’s phone was yesterday played to the jury in the trial of three men accused of conspiring to defeat justice.

Devon Hewey, Dujon Reid-Anderson and Kamal Worrell have each denied several offences linked to the alleged conspiracy, in which the Crown claims a witness in a shooting trial was threatened and offered $3,500 to give false testimony. Opening their case, prosecutors claimed that Mr Reid-Anderson sent voice notes of a “threatening nature” to Lavon Thomas, the witness, and convinced him to meet with Mr Worrell, a defence lawyer who at the time was representing Mr Hewey.

When Mr Thomas later took the stand, he testified that he knew Mr Hewey and he was not the person he saw involved in the shooting. Prosecutors say Mr Thomas later told police he lied under oath, but wanted to come clean because he was afraid.

In the present trial, the jury heard that several cellular phones were seized as part of the investigation, including an iPhone associated with Mr Worrell. Detective Constable Nigel Richardson testified that he used a forensic machine to extract data from the phones, including a total of nine audio files from the iPhone.

The court then heard one of the audio recordings, which was dated September 14 last year. In the recording, which lasted several minutes and was played to the jury twice in an effort to improve the audio quality, at least two men can be heard talking.

One voice is heard to say: “Based on my information, the question I have is could you say ... I mean, you said that you didn’t recognise him, but could you say from what you did see it wasn’t Hew? I don’t believe they asked that from you before.”

Later in the recording, one speaker appears to say: “If it’s inconsistent, they are going to contradict you, but it’s not inconsistent. They won’t contradict you. You’re their witness. They are relying on your testimony.”

Under cross examination by Mr Worrell, Detective Richardson said that the equipment he uses can recover files that have been deleted from a cellular phone by a user, or even if a device is thrown overboard. “It doesn’t get deleted,” he said. “It just gets covered over. Masked, if you will. The information is still sitting on the phone. It doesn’t disappear into thin air.”

However, he said that all of the audio files on the iPhone were in their default folder, indicating that they had not been deleted. He also confirmed that his equipment does not alter or delete any files on the phone, meaning that the recordings would still be accessible to anyone who uses the phone.

The trial continues.

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