A duo accused of conspiring to import $236,000 of cocaine into Bermuda had a “well orchestrated and well engineered plan” to smuggle the drug to the Island, a court heard yesterday.

Senior Crown counsel Paula Tyndale said there was “no innocence” involved in the plan hatched by Jahmiko Hayward and Shannon Dwayne Tucker.

The defendants both deny the conspiracy charge.

They claim they knew nothing about a car bumper, intercepted by Police at Bermuda Airport in 2004, found to contain cocaine.

It was shipped from St. Martin under the name of Tucker, the three-week trial has heard, before being collected by Hayward from courier firm DHL in Bermuda. Ms Tyndale, summing up the prosecution case for the jury yesterday morning, attacked both men’s defences.

She asked the jury whether they believed someone in the drugs business, not known to either defendant, would pack over $200,000 of cocaine in a bumper part and just “leave it at large for any person to come and send it anywhere.

“You think in the drugs world they are that disorganised and stupid?” she continued. “Do you think they would treat their investments that laxly?”

She also questioned Tucker’s claim the bumper was taken out of its box at DHL, and that someone there had placed drugs inside before welding the ends shut. Ms Tyndale said there was not time to do this and added that the quality of the welding was “rough”, suggesting it had been done in a rush.

The prosecution also pointed to a flurry of calls between the defendants around the time of the two-part shipment arriving in Bermuda. The first contained siderails, the second a bumper.

Ms Tyndale, who asked why so many calls were made if it was just a “simple parcel”, said there was no laxity about the plan hatched by Tucker and Hayward. She said it was “well orchestrated and well engineered.”

After asking what the urgency was about the car parts, she stated: “The reason for the urgency is because they both knew there were drugs in one of those packages and they both wanted to try and ensure that these items were recovered at the first available opportunity so that they could not be discovered.”

She said the conspiracy started when Tucker bought car parts in St. Martin and shipped them to Bermuda, before Hayward representing himself as Tucker collected them from DHL.

She told the court Tucker, who claims he shipped the parts to fit up a girlfriend’s car, had lied to the court and Police about his involvement.

Allan Doughty, for Hayward, however, told the court there were gaps in the Crown’s case — and urged the jury not to “fill them with speculation”.

He said a series of calls were made between the defendants. But the defence lawyer said the phone records in evidence did not reveal the content of the calls, adding there was nothing in the records about any “coke deal”.

Hayward, who has no previous convictions, called DHL several times about the shipment because he kept getting put on hold, Mr. Doughty explained.

He suggested that his client said he was Tucker when he collected the shipment at DHL because he did not want the “hassle” of getting faxed permission. And he asked whether the defendants looked like people who could have come up with a “highly orchestrated” drugs plan.

The lawyer also asked if a “so-called confession” from Hayward when interviewed by Police was reliable. He questioned if his client had understood the question, when he was asked if he knew the car parts he collected contained drugs. And Mr. Doughty said that the shock of being arrested in a sting operation and accused of importation, after collecting the bumper, had to be taken into account. He also said that his client had no lawyer, and said Hayward, aged 19 at the time, needed someone to communicate his words.

“If you find his explanation reasonable, then you must acquit,” added the defence attorney. Tucker, defending himself, said the first statement he gave to Police was untrue because he was coming down off heroin but added that he had not lied in court. “Everything I said in this court was the truth,” he added.

He later questioned why DHL would send the bumper in bubble-wrap and not in a box. And he asked how the drugs were found in Bermuda but were not located in the USA, where they were diverted on the way to the Island from St. Martin.

He said his nephew, Hayward, had done nothing wrong and said that he was only guilty of sending the shipment. “I did not know what was in it,” he added.

Tucker said the charge against him was a “laugh” — and this was why he did not get himself a lawyer. Tucker, 30, of Broken Hill Lane, Smith’s, and his nephew Hayward, 22, of Green Acres, Devonshire, deny conspiring together and with persons unknown to import $236,000 worth of cocaine into the Island between March 1 and April 5, 2004. The trial continues today, when Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves is due to start summing up.