The High Court has cleared a man of charges of at­tempt­ed mur­der, shoot­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, pos­ses­sion of a firearm and pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh found that the pros­e­cu­tion failed to prove be­yond rea­son­able doubt that Christo­pher “Rock Back” Lewis was the per­son who shot Jef­frey Bona­parte on De­cem­ber 29, 2023.

The cen­tral is­sue in the tri­al was the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the vi­su­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence giv­en by the pros­e­cu­tion’s three main wit­ness­es—Jef­frey Bona­parte, Dane Bak­er and Michael Bag­gan. All three wit­ness­es knew Lewis be­fore the in­ci­dent.

Jus­tice Singh eval­u­at­ed the cir­cum­stances of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence and de­ter­mined that it was not re­li­able enough to sup­port a con­vic­tion.

Bona­parte, the vir­tu­al com­plainant, di­rect­ly iden­ti­fied Lewis as the shoot­er and said he was about five feet away. How­ev­er, Jus­tice Singh point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant weak­ness­es in his ev­i­dence.

The judge not­ed that Bona­parte ad­mit­ted every­thing hap­pened quick­ly and that he on­ly saw the as­sailant “for that sec­ond” while turn­ing and falling dur­ing the shoot­ing.

She al­so found that the ob­ser­va­tion took place at night while Bona­parte was un­der ex­treme stress, re­act­ing to muz­zle flash­es, feel­ing pain and try­ing to es­cape.

The ev­i­dence of the sec­ond wit­ness, Dane Bak­er, was al­so heav­i­ly crit­i­cised and af­ford­ed very lim­it­ed weight by the court.

Un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, Bak­er ad­mit­ted that parts of his ev­i­dence in court, in­clud­ing his claim that he saw the ac­cused shoot­ing from in­side the house, were false and fab­ri­cat­ed.

The third wit­ness, Michael Bag­gan, claimed he saw rapid red fire from a gun from his front door and “made out” Lewis from a dis­tance of 30 to 35 feet.

Jus­tice Singh found that his tes­ti­mo­ny was weak­ened by con­tra­dic­tions and poor preser­va­tion of the crime scene.

The court fur­ther crit­i­cised in­ves­tiga­tive short­com­ings, not­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tor, WPC Git­tens, failed to se­cure a scene sketch, prop­er mea­sure­ments or pho­tographs of the street­light, pre­vent­ing the court from in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sess­ing the qual­i­ty of the light­ing con­di­tions.

The de­fence ar­gued that the wit­ness­es fab­ri­cat­ed the al­le­ga­tions against Lewis be­cause he was a State wit­ness in an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter in­volv­ing an ac­quain­tance of theirs named Tris­tan De Sil­va.

Jus­tice Singh re­ject­ed the claim of a co­or­di­nat­ed fab­ri­ca­tion plot, find­ing the sug­gest­ed mo­tive spec­u­la­tive and un­sup­port­ed by the ev­i­dence.

She ac­cept­ed that Bona­parte and Bag­gan hon­est­ly be­lieved they saw Lewis, but stressed that hon­est wit­ness­es can still be mis­tak­en.

The court al­so high­light­ed the ab­sence of in­de­pen­dent ev­i­dence link­ing Lewis to the crime.

No firearm was re­cov­ered from Lewis’ home, and the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed no foren­sic ev­i­dence, CCTV footage or ob­jec­tive ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the wit­ness­es’ lines of sight.