The conviction of Jamaican dancehall star Vybz Kartel for the murder of a colleague has been overturned after a London court ruled on Thursday (March 14) that the conviction was unjustified due to attempts to bribe the jury a decade ago.
In April 2014, Kartel was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
The 48-year-old musician, real name Adidja Palmer, remains a popular artist in Jamaica and is known internationally for his 2009 Major Lazer collaboration “Pon De Floor,” which was heavily sampled in Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).”
Kartel was first arrested in Jamaica in 2011 after his partner Clive “Lizard” Williams disappeared. His body was never found.
Prosecutors alleged that Williams was beaten to death in Kartel’s home in August of that year after being lured there to answer for the disappearance of two illegal weapons.
The trial lasted 65 days, the longest in Jamaica’s history.
In February this year, Kartel and his co-defendants Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John lodged their last possible appeal with the Privy Council in London. The Privy Council is the final appeal body for Jamaica and some other Commonwealth countries.
Their lawyers argued that the trial judge at the time had mishandled allegations that a juror had offered his fellow jurors 500,000 Jamaican dollars (about 3,200 US dollars) to find the defendants not guilty.
On Thursday, Judge David Lloyd-Jones agreed with that view, saying the trial judge’s decision to keep the juror in question on the jury was “fatal to the security of the convictions.”
The Privy Council has referred the case back to the Court of Appeal in Jamaica, which will now decide whether Kartel and his co-defendants should be retried.
Kartel will remain in prison until a decision is made.
A statement from the Privy Council said: “The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has concluded that the appeals should be allowed and the convictions of the appellants should be set aside on the grounds of jury misconduct. In addition, the case should be remitted to the Court of Appeal of Jamaica for a decision on whether to order a retrial of the appellants for the murder of the deceased.”
During the first trial, hundreds of Jamaicans gathered outside the courtroom chanting “Freedom for Cartel” while police in riot gear guarded the cordoned-off streets outside Kingston’s Supreme Court.
Shortly before the jury began its deliberations in the afternoon, about 200 people briefly broke through the barricades at an intersection and shouted “Free Kartel”.
In 2013, another murder trial against Kartel and two other co-defendants collapsed after prosecutors failed to present evidence to support allegations that the trio killed businessman Barrington “Bossy” Burton in 2011.
