A defence barrister has invoked a frequently misquoted Jimi Hendrix line to suggest authorities had misinterpreted phone calls that allegedly planned a robbery from behind the walls of Canberra's jail.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A jury has begun deliberating on allegations that friends Shane Cringle, 26, and Jackson Allred, 20, conspired to commit a robbery in Florey in May 2011.
The robbery was allegedly agreed to by Cringle from behind bars, to help him pay for a $450 drug debt he incurred after a "mix-up" that saw him take drugs smuggled in for his fellow prisoners.
The Crown alleges a series of 11 phone calls made by Cringle, all recorded by authorities, were used to come up with a plan to commit a robbery in Florey to pay back the debt.
Allred and others were stopped by police as they approached the Florey home, and drugs, drug paraphernalia and weapons were found in their car.
But, in the closing stages of the trial, Cringle's defence barrister Alyn Doig told the jury that the constant use of confusing slang, jargon and pig Latin during the phone calls had been misinterpreted by authorities.
Mr Doig said the pair had merely planned to pick up cannabis from the Florey home, which they planned to sell to pay back Cringle's debt.
In his closing submission to the jury, Mr Doig pointed to a line from the 1967 Jimi Hendrix song Purple Haze, "excuse me while I kiss the sky", which is often misheard as "excuse me while I kiss this guy".
He said the phone calls between Cringle and Allred were almost in "another language", and words could easily be misinterpreted if taken out of context.
Mr Doig said the 11 phone calls were not one long, continuous, logical conversation setting up the robbery, as the prosecution claimed, but were instead like "reading random chapters of a book".
He also warned the jury that the trial was not a popularity contest, and that they couldn't find Cringle guilty because they thought he was "not a particularly nice human being".
"If this was a Big Brother contest you might vote him out of the house," Mr Doig said to the jury.
He said the pair were clearly going to the house to obtain cannabis, noting that the "presence of drugs is all over this trial".
"Could it be, shock horror, that the real reason they were there was for drugs, and only drugs," Mr Doig said.
"If you can conclude that your duty is to return a verdict of not guilty," he said.
