GRIFFITH man Brandon Kay denied any knowledge of illegal drugs found by police in a sunglasses case, but his DNA was on a cotton bud also in the case, a jury has heard.
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Kay, 21, is on trial in Wagga District Court having pleaded not guilty to two counts of supplying a prohibited drug.
One count relates to 55.1 grams of the drug ice and the other relates to seven ecstasy tablets.
The drugs, the cotton stick and a cigarette lighter were in a black hard sunglasses case found by police in the rear parcel shelf of a Holden Commodore driven by Kay and stopped for a random breath test on the Burley Griffin Way between Stockinbingal and Wallendbeen about 12.20am on December 15, 2012.
There were three other Griffith men in the car, and they also denied knowledge of the drugs when questioned at the scene by police.
Giving evidence on the first day of Kay’s trial on Tuesday, the officer in charge of the investigation, Leading Senior Constable Steven Magnone, said testing of the cotton bud by a forensic biologist found Kay’s DNA to be the major contributor to a mixture of DNA on the cotton bud.
Earlier, in his opening statement, Kay’s defence counsel Michael King asked the jury not to leap to conclusions about the DNA evidence, saying DNA “can turn up in all sorts of places where you don’t expect it to.”
In her opening address, DPP solicitor Lisa Hanshaw said the prosecution would rely on a number of factors – how the drugs were found, Kay’s nervousness when questioned by police at the scene and the DNA on the cotton bud.
