AN ALLEGED gunman accused of shooting a man five times in the legs in Ravenswood has been cleared of wrongdoing.
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Shaun Keverall Kaye, of Youngtown, contested one count of causing grievous bodily harm to Timothy John Harris by shooting him in Castlemaine Road on July 12, 2012.
Yesterday he was found not guilty after two hours of deliberation by a Launceston jury.
The majority verdict followed two days of evidence including from Mr Harris who recanted an earlier police statement naming Mr Kaye as the trigger man.
A few days after the shooting a hospitalised Mr Harris told police he was walking through Ravenswood during the night in question when he heard a voice from behind telling him to "get in the park".
He he put his hands in the air and told the gunman he was sick of it.
"The male I was talking to was Shaun Kaye," he told detectives.
Mr Harris was then shot five times.
In court last week he denied making the statements to police and said he was being pressured to give up a name to get a $30,000 victim's payout.
"I didn't want to testify, they kept pursuing it ... so basically I came up with someone I didn't f---ing like," he said on Thursday.
The court heard Mr Harris pulled a gun on Mr Kaye in the Sunnyhill Hotel about a month before he was shot.
Crown prosecutor John Ransom said this gave Mr Kaye the motive for a retaliatory shooting.
He said Mr Harris was only changing his story now because he was in jail.
"Now being a dobber in prison is not a good look," Mr Ransom said.
During the trial there were fears Mr Harris might try and spoil the proceedings by saying something prejudicial about Mr Kaye.
According to Mr Ransom, at one stage Mr Harris had said "what about a mistrial? You guys wouldn't like that".
This prompted Justice Robert Pearce to give Mr Harris a special warning, in the absence of the jury, about doing anything that could sabotage the trial.
In his closing statement defence counsel James Oxley zeroed in on Mr Harris' backflip as proof the jury could not rely on his evidence.
He urged the jury not to cherry pick the evidence of a liar by "hanging your hats" on two paragraphs contained in a disputed police statement.
Mr Oxley said there was a lack of supporting evidence such as the weapon, gun powder residue on his client's clothing, DNA, finger prints or footprints.
Even if the jury navigated Harris's "web of lies" and found he was telling the truth about identifying's Mr Kaye's voice, they still could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn't mistaken.