Martin faces critical evidence

(CNS): Confronted with phone records that directly contradicted his earlier testimony, the man on trial for the murder of Sabrina Schirn had no explanation when his case resumed on Tuesday morning.  During the prosecution’s cross examination, Solicitor General Cheryll Richards asked Randy Martin how he could possibly have met Schirn at the farm at 10:38 on the morning of March 11, as he claimed, when 12 seconds earlier the records proved that she was in the Savannah-Bodden Town area, and Martin had no answers.

During careful and detailed cross examination, Richards questioned the plausibility of Martin’s account and accused him of lying and fabricating his testimony to detract away from the fact that he was responsible for the killing of Schirn. She suggested he had carefully planned the murder and that his evidence made no sense.

From his claims that Schirn made a phone call to another man while they were sharing an intimate moment to the three phone calls he said were made between them as he supposedly made his rapid getaway back his post at the farm, Richards said he was making things up to try and explain away evidence which pointed to his guilt. The solicitor general said Martin’s explanation would not be possible based on the records.

“I can’t explain, I don’t understand this,” Martin told the court as the details of the phone records and the cell locations were shown to him.

Pressing him about his behaviour after the 11 March, Richard asked him why he did not call Schirn, between whom he said there was nothing but love, once he knew she was missing. As he claimed he had no reason to do so as they had arranged to meet, Richards exclaimed that he did not call Schirn because he already knew she was dead.

She queried why, if his account was true, instead of assisting the police by telling them he had seen her on the 11 March and left her alive that he had lied about even knowing her.

Claiming that he had already been singled out as a suspect because of rumours in the prison even before the police came, Martin said he did not want to say anything until he knew what was happening. Richards, however, said it was evidence of a guilty mind.

Faced with the contradicting evidence regarding the phone records, Martin still denied his involvement in the crime and insisted he had no reason to hurt Schirn.

Richards said the phone records indicated that she arrived in High Rock at around 10:59 and between then and 11:27, when her phone suddenly went off the air, was when he was with Sabrina, which, she said, matched with the evidence given by one of the prison officers that he was absent from the farm for some time.

Richards suggested he met Schirn not where he claimed but where her body was found, and after killing her he placed the glove he had acquired from an inmate and drove her car to where it was later discovered. Throwing away the glove and the car keys he took off his shirt and then made his way back to the farm, following what she said was a planned murder.

Martin continued to repeat, “No ma’am, nothing like that ever occurred,” and that he had “no reason to kill Sabrina,” as Richards probed his account of the morning in question.

Returning to what the prosecution said was his motive, that he believed Sabrina Schirn was the woman involved in the shooting of his brother Fernando Martin, he continued to deny this and said he had always known which Sabrina it was that had been involved and he knew it was not Sabrina Schirn.   

In redirection David Evans QC, his defence attorney, asked Martin why he knew that Sabrina Schirn was not involved. Martin said he had statements from the Sheldon Brown trial regarding the involvement of a Sabrina Powell and that he had always known it was that girl and not Schirn.

Following his counsel’s re-examination, Justice Charles Quinn, who is trying Martin without a jury, asked him a number of questions regarding the calls that Martin claimed were made between him and Sabrina after they parted, as he said he hurried back to the farm. The judge also asked how Schirn had come to make a phone call while they were, as Martin had said, having sex. The judge also asked Martin about the tools he used and where they were kept on the farm.

The defence then told the court that it would not be calling further witnesses and therefore counsel would be moving to closing statements on Thursday morning.