Vybz Kartel and Shawn Storm’s defense attorneys want full acquittal of the convicted men and not a new trial.
Lawyers representing convicted murderers Vybz Kartel, Shawn Storm, Andre St John, and Kahira Jones, gave their arguments in the Court of Appeal last week where they put the prosecution and the trial judge in the hot seat. The legal team, headed by Valrie Neita-Robertson and Bert Samuels asked the appeal court judges to completely exonerate the four men of the murder conviction and not ordered a retrial.
Shawn “Storm” Campbell’s attorney, Bert Samuels, urged the judges not to give the prosecution a second chance to correct their wrongs in the first trial. “Any attempt to cure them for retrial purposes would be to give the prosecution a second bite at an infected cherry,” Samuels said in court.
The veteran criminal defense attorney argued that the case had multiple deficiencies that cannot be corrected. The lawyers chided trial judge Justice Lennox Campbell last week for making several controversial rulings and appearing bias in his summation of the case. The defense team argued that the judge should not have allowed tainted evidence to be admitted in court and should’ve ordered a new trial when he learned about the corrupt intent of one juror.
Sources close to the case told Urban Islandz that Vybz Kartel agrees that he doesn’t want a new trial since it will still put him at a disadvantage with several tainted evidence being already admissible. “Kartel and his lawyers went through the appeal in details and he is of the view that a new trial would still put him at a disadvantage in terms of the evidence tampering and the case being so highly publicized in the court of public opinion,” sources told us.
The prosecution is currently giving their rebuttal to the defense arguments and is expected to wrap today or tomorrow.
