Vybz Kartel and Shawn Storm’s appeal trial reached the sixth day of legal battle in front of the Court of Appeal in downtown Kingston, Jamaica.

THE DEFENSE

Vybz Kartel and Shawn Storm’s legal teams want the full acquittal for their clients and not a new trial.

Lawyers representing World Boss Vybz Kartel, Shawn Storm, Andre St John and Kahira Jones, gave their arguments in the Court of Appeal during the course of last week, putting the prosecution and the trial judge in the hot seat. The attorney’s team lead by Valerie 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 arguing that the case had multiple deficiencies that cannot be corrected. The lawyers also grilled the trial’s judge Justice Lennox Campbell 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.

Vybz Kartel himself also feels that he doesn’t want a new trial since it would still put him in a position of disadvantage with several tainted evidence being already admissible.

THE PROSECUTION

Prosecutors on Monday urged the Court of Appeal to rule that a sufficient case has NOT been made out by defense lawyers for them to free incarcerated dancehall entertainer, Vybz Kartel.

The prosecutors say a claim by defense lawyers that Kartel and his co-appellants cannot get a fair re-trial if their conviction is quashed, lacks merit.

This past Monday 23rd of July Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions and lead prosecutor in Vybz Kartel’s murder case, Jeremy Taylor, went on with his rebuttal in the Jamaicam Court of Appeal where he defended the trial judge Justice Lennox Campbell, and also denied any misconduct on the part of the DPP.

During the controversial 2014 murder trial, Justice Lennox Campbell dismissed one female juror from the jury duties when said she was afraid because her son was in prison at the time of the trial and he was being housed at the Horizon Adult Correctional Centre, which was the same facility Vybz Kartel and his co-accused.

Shawn Storm’s attorney Bert Samuels argued that the dismissal of the juror from the case was a breach of his client’s constitutional right to a fair trial. Jeremy Taylor instead said that the judge did nothing wrong in his dismissal of the female juror and such decision was based on a real ethical dilemma.

Taylor said that the female juror explained that during one of her visit to see her son at Horizon, she saw one of the co-accused, Andre ‘Mad Suss’ St John. The female juror then became fearful that she or her son could be harmed. The prosecutor also said that no one objected to the judge’s decision to discharged the juror.

It’s very cleat that the prosecution wants Vybz Kartel and co-accused to remain behind bars for the rest of their life. Lead prosecutor, Jeremy Taylor, in his presentation to the Court of Appeal judges, argued  on Monday that some damning text messages taken from a Kartel‘s phone that has been tampered with by the police, should be treated as an admission of guilt. These are text messages taken from the same phone that police allegedly tampered with while having it in their custody.

Taylor asked the three Court of Appeal judges to view the text message as an admission to murder.

Jeremy Taylor went on saying that even if the court accepted inadmissible evidence during the trial, there were something like 19 more pieces of other circumstantial evidence that he believed would lead the jury to reach the same verdict.

Kartel’s and co-accused defense team will have a chance on Tuesday to prove wrong some of the prosecution’s arguments. 

Watch a recap of Vybz Kartel’s Appeal’s Trial in the video posted below.