By Latrishka Thomas
In the third day of the trial in which transgender social media personality Washington Bramble is defending herself against charges under the Electronic Crimes Act, the accused made some serious claims while cross-examining a witness.
The 41-year-old defendant is said to have made remarks on Facebook in February last year about Chief Magistrate Joanne Walsh for the purpose of insulting, intimidating, causing hatred, and causing enmity – all of which she denies.
Yesterday, the court only got through two witnesses – a police officer and a court clerk.
While the officer’s evidence was brief, the testimony of junior clerk Thais Luke was quite lengthy.
Bramble, who is representing herself, catechised the witness in an attempt to convince Magistrate Dane Hamilton Jnr that this witness “conspired [with the Chief Magistrate] to create screenshots purporting that it came from my Facebook page”.
But before getting to that, Luke told the court that she joined Facebook in 2009 and either added Bramble or accepted her friend request.
As a result, on February 8 2022 while scrolling through the social media app at work, she saw two posts made through Bramble’s page and showed them to another clerk who she later sent screenshots of the posts to.
The witness said the first post contained an article from Antigua Newsroom about the Chief Magistrate and included a caption made by the accused.
They said although the second post did not contain the name or photo of the complainant, she believed the defendant was referring to Walsh because they appeared right after one another.
Bramble in her cross examination first made it clear to the witness that she was the one who added her on Facebook but the witness was not sure.
She however got the witness to admit that she was friends with her on Facebook to “mind my business”.
The defendant went on to ask Luke what she understood one of the posts to mean and she said to the court, “him being disrespectful to the Chief and her acting as DPP”.
Next, Bramble sought to ascertain whether the witness knew that screenshots could be edited using apps like Photoshop, but the witness said no.
The defendant then said, “You had somebody create screenshots to say that I said things about the Chief Magistrate.”
“No I did not,” the witness responded.
But Bramble did not stop there. She then accused the witness of conspiring with the complainant to doctor the images and said she came upon two screenshots of her post that were slightly different.
“Several screenshots were put together,” the accused claimed.
With leave from the court she then showed the images to the witness who said that the only difference is that one had additional information – the name of an individual at the bottom with a remark.
She said the detailed screenshot did not come from her phone but as an avid Facebook user it appeared that that screenshot showed “that someone else shared the same post which Bramble posted”.
“I put to you that a person sharing my post would not appear immediately underneath,” the defendant followed up.
“Because it’s the same article it shows up like that,” Luke rebutted, insisting that it does not appear to be doctored.
After Bramble completed her line of questioning, the trial was adjourned until today in the St John’s Magistrate’s Court.
There are about four more witnesses left to take the stand.
