The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is set to hand down its judgment on the appeal brought by Vybz Kartel, Shawn Storm, and two other appellants, Kahira Jones and Andre St. John, who are all challenging their 2014 convictions.
On Friday, Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell’s lawyer, Bert Samuels, revealed that he was pleasantly surprised by the relatively quick judgment.
“It’s a pleasant surprise because I had thought the delivery of judgment would have taken three to four months, which is normal for cases of this length in the Privy Council. I simply had forgotten that we did, in fact, get an expedition hearing granted to us… Consistent with the grant of that expedition hearing is also the expedition of the delivery of the decision and so that I was not thinking of that when I have a previous opinion that it would take four months. So we are elated that the court has decided to hand the judgment down in four weeks,” Samuels said in an Irie FM report.
Samuels added that his client is hoping for an acquittal of the murder charges in the death of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams.
“Speaking on behalf of the clients, they are hoping they will be fully acquitted. We respect the court’s decision, no matter what it is. There is a possibility, but we’re hoping this doesn’t really happen, that a retrial may be ordered, but as I say, as attorneys, we are guarded to say what we think it will be because we do not want it to interfere with the judgment itself. That’s why I speak on behalf of the appellants who are hoping for a full acquittal,” the senior lawyer said.
Vybz Kartel, real name Adidja Palmer, and his co-appellants were challenging their 2014 convictions at the JCPC and failed to convince the Jamaica court of appeal that their conviction was not safe.
Their JCPC appeal is based on several grounds, including whether the trial judge, by allowing telecommunications evidence from Digicel taken from Blackberry phones belonging to Vybz Kartel and his co-defendants, violated their constitutional rights, whether the judge acted correctly by not discharging the jury after finding out one member offered bribes to the others, whether the judge wrong to invite the jury to reach a verdict late in the day rather than to deliberate until they came to a consensus.
Vybz Kartel and other appellants were represented by a team of more than a dozen lawyers led by Hugh Southey KC, James Robottom, and Anirudh Mathur alongside Isat Buchanan, Bert Samuels, Bianca Samuels, John Clarke, Saul Lehrfreund, Killian Moran, Kane Nosworthy, Bethany Jackson, Linda Hudson and others.
King’s Counsel Peter Knox and others, along with the Director of Public Prosecution Jamaica, Paula Llewellyn, represented the prosecution.
