Yesterday has been another intense day in Vybz Kartel’s and co-accused appeal trial, and after all the defense lawyers spoke to the appeal court, it was now the prosecutors time to speak.
Playing the same refrain heard in the previous trial that convicted World Boss, it was argued by prosecutors that the integrity of the phone video, text messages, and voice notes used to convict Vybz Kartel, real name Aididja Palmer, of murder, remain all intact and was properly left to jurors to consider.
But it did not stop there since prosecutors went on asking the Court of Appeal also to dismiss claims by attorneys for Kartel and co convicted, that the actions and doing of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn during the 2014 17-week trial amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.
“It cannot be held that the DPP acted maliciously in the conduct of this trial,” Taylor insisted.
Vybz Kartel, Shawn Storm, Khaira Jones and Andre Saint John‘s attorneys argued for four days this week that the convictions should be squashed because of multiple defects during the trial, charging, among other things, that it amounted to prosecutorial misconduct when Llewellyn did not stop the trial after she became aware of allegations that one of the jurors allegedly tried to bribe his colleagues to return a verdict of not guilty.
In addition, the attorneys for the four men said that the evidence extracted from three mobile phones belonging to Kartel was contaminated, the phones where used and tampered with by police and that Justice Lennox Campbell erred when he allowed them to be admitted as evidence and with the directions he gave the jury.
However, Orrett Brown, assistant director of public prosecutions, acknowledged that there were at least five instances where Kartel’s mobile phone was used while it was in the custody of police investigators, but he said that there could be no doubt as to the integrity of the data extracted from the instrument.
“Where gaps arise in the continuity [of the evidence], they do not bar admissibility. What they affect is the weight or cogency that is attached to the evidence,” he said of the alleged phone tampering.
Brown also shot down an assertion by Shawn Storm’s attorney, Bianca Samuels, that the meta data for one of the damning text messages used to convict the four men had been created on July 6, 2011, six weeks before Williams’ death.
“Between me and you, a chop wi chop up di bwoy Lizard fine fine and dash him weh, nuh. As long as wi a live, dem can never find him,” the message read.
Brown, citing the testimony of one police investigator, noted that it was the folder containing the message that was created on July 6, 2011. “That message was created on August 19, 2011, three days before the date on the indictment [when Williams was killed],” he indicated.
“It is our submission that this is a misapprehension of the message,” said Brown.
He noted, too, that the video, text messages, and voice notes all carried a date and a time stamp, “which are important to prove the provenance of the forensic evidence”.
