10 months ago
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On the eve of Emancipation Day – a day synonymous with freedom – word came from the Court of Appeal that Jamaica’s most famous prisoner, recording artiste Adidja ‘Vybz Kartel’ Palmer, would be set free after spending 13 years locked up behind bars.
Court of Appeal president Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop entered the full courtroom at 2 p.m., and after spending 22 minutes going over the case and briefly explaining the 12 factors that had been examined in reaching a decision, she announced that there was a “verdict of acquittal”. She spent another minute thanking the legal teams for their “spirited and sometimes combative” arguments, and at 2:23 p.m., McDonald-Bishop uttered the words “The appellants are free.”
The courtroom remained totally silent until the judges exited. Then, journalists rushed to Isat Buchanan and his winning team of attorneys, who represented Vybz Kartel and the three co-accused.
“God and time,” were the first words from a smiling Buchanan, who said he expected that verdict. “And this is evidence that the justice system works, and this is also evidence that you cannot do anything without God. I am very ... I am going to use the word ‘happy’. I want to let the Jamaican people know that although it needs fixing, the justice system works, and I want to thank the team for the hard work we put into it. It was many years ... it was a long fight. We are down here awaiting the release of Adidja Palmer.”
FREE MEN
Noting that as of the very moment the judge made the announcement, Kartel and his co-accused, Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, Kahira Jones, and Andre St John, were free men, Buchanan said the intent was to get them to their families to spend some quality time. He gave a time of 5 p.m. for the four to walk out of the prison gates.
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‘”This is their Independence Day,” Buchanan said.
Attorney-at-law Bert Samuels told The Gleaner that he was “not at all surprised at the findings of the court”.
“Things were stacked against the prosecution . This was a long journey to freedom. The court balanced the societal concerns, that is ... it is a serious crime and murders are prevalent. But it went over the other side and looked at the rights of the accused and the fact that they have been in custody for 13 years and the prospect of a retrial within a reasonable time is not forthcoming, and they looked at the statistics with respect to other cases set down for retrial,” Samuels said.
He added: “But an interesting point came up. If they were to be retried, at least two of the accused faced stiffer minimum sentences recently passed in our laws. So the 2014 law would reduce the jury to seven from 12, and also, the sentence is a minimum of 35 years. So they would be so prejudiced if there were to be a retrial. So the balancing act came out with the accused men getting the constitutional relief, their right to a free trial within a reasonable time. That’s the decision. Going forward, this case is bound to affect other cases where the court is considering retrial or no retrial. And, therefore, the prosecution needs to put its house in order and make sure retrials happen within a reasonable time ... not two, three, four, five years as the statistics showed.”
Vybz Kartel and three co-defendants were accused of killing Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams on August 16, 2011, after he reportedly failed to return two unlicensed firearms given to him by Kartel to secure. Williams has not been seen since, and his body has never been found. In April 2014, Kartel was sentenced to 35 years minimum in jail, which was subsequently reduced to 32.5 years in prison.
The men were given leave to appeal to the Privy Council, which, after listening to the case, handed it back to the court in Jamaica to decide on a retrial or acquittal.
“So this has been a long walk to freedom for the accused, and we big up the trial team, we big up the Court of Appeal team, we big up the Privy Council team, and we big up the team which argued in favour for no retrial. ‘Victory for Justice’ is what I would put as the headline for this case,” Samuels said.
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