Kartel now a free man

Dancehall star Vybz Kartel is free. The Court of Appeal just ruled that he and three co-accused should not be retried for murder.

Freedom, a day before Jamaica celebrates Emancipation Day, caps an almost 13-year journey of arrests, trial, convictions, and a successful appeal for Kartel and Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, Andre St John and Kahira Jones. 

Jones, however, will remain in custody because he is serving a sentence in an unrelated case. 

The highly anticipated decision was delivered by newly minted President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop. She led a panel of three judges which comprised justices Paulette Williams and David Fraser. 

The decision was unanimous.

The men were charged in September 2011 and convicted in March 2014 of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams’ murder. They were sentenced to life in prison in April 2014. 

Following an unsuccessful challenge of the conviction in the Jamaican Court of Appeal, they went to the Privy Council, Jamaica’s highest court.

The Privy Council threw out their convictions in March 2024 on the grounds of juror misconduct but remitted the matter to the Court of Appeal to determine whether there should be a retrial. 

The top court said the trial judge should have dismissed a tainted juror, Livingston Cain, who was later found guilty of accepting a bribe to try to influence other jurors in the case.

The Court of Appeal held six-days of oral arguments on the retrial issue from June 10. 

The prosecution, led by Acting Director of Public Prosecutions Claudette Thompson argued vociferously for the men to be retried. They argued that the accused men must not be allowed to walk free based on a technical blunder or pretrial publicity as there are sufficient safeguards in the criminal justice system to ensure that the men get a fair trial by an independent and impartial jury.

The prosecution accepted that the men’s constitutional right to a trial within a reasonable time was breached but that there were remedies to address that. They also said the cost to be incurred should not be weighed too heavily as no money can be placed on life regardless of the deceased’s character.

The defence led by John Clarke and Isat Buchanan argued that the men should be freed in the interest of justice, claiming constitutional breaches, pre-trial publicity and leaking of evidence from the trial. 

They stressed that the length of time that has elapsed since the incident is a factor that must weigh against ordering a new trial, especially since the elapse has resulted in the breach of the accused men’s right to be tried within a reasonable time.

They also argued that the ordeal suffered by the men including Kartel’s health challenges must be factored in the decision not to have a retrial.

Furthermore, they posited that it would be impossible to get a jury that will be able “to disavow itself from the notion that the accused men somehow benefited… from the action of the blunder with the jury”.