Bounty Killer Says The ‘System’ Is “Too Ashamed And Embarrassed” To Free Vybz Kartel Without Retrial

While predicting that Vybz Kartel will eventually be freed from prison, Bounty Killer also contended that if the Any Weather deejay had lacked the financial means to take his case to the UK Privy Council, he would not be getting the justice he is seeking in his murder case.

On Wednesday, the Warlord took to Instagram, where he pointed out that while the State has the option of retrying or releasing Kartel, the possibility that the deejay and his co-accused, Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John, will be freed without a re-trial was unlikely.

“Retrial pon speed dial plus bail with no denial God in the midst.  As a Jamaican citizen I’m not afraid to talk plus I don’t owe the tax man or obeah man.  If justice was properly served then the higher courts would not overturn the convictions, so it’s only two things can happen now is to schedule a retrial and grant them bail or let them go, point blank, period,” Bounty noted.

“But we all know that they are too ashamed and embarrassed to make them walk free so imagine what a regular Jamaican would’ve to face,” he noted, adding later in the comments that: “all who’s money can’t take them to privy council dog nyam them supper?”

One commenter, in response to Bounty’s statements, noted that “vybz kartel don’t need no retrial. They need to free up the vybz kartel now. He already spend a lot of time in prison already” to which the Smoke The Herb singer replied: “They would die b4 just setting him walk free so although either ways he will be freed.  Time and God.  Trust the process.”

The Privy Council had quashed Kartel and his co-accused 2014 murder convictions for the 2011 killing of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams, citing juror misconduct, and sent the case back to the Court of Appeal to determine whether or not the four men ought to be retried. The Court of Appeal concluded oral arguments on the matter on Tuesday and will deliver its decision by the end of July.

Bounty’s statements about the expensive nature of justice are similar to those made by former Prime Minister PJ Patterson in a reasoning session at the University of the West Indies Faculty of Law two weeks ago.  

“One of the things we have to understand: poor people are denied the equality of Justice because Justice is costly.  If Vybz Kartel didn’t have the money, his case wouldn’t have gone to the Privy Council,” said Patterson, who is also a lawyer.

Patterson, however, argued further that Kartel’s case ought not to have gone to the Privy Council in the first place as there was judicial precedent from a similar case in which the Jamaican Court of Appeal had decided that “once there is any sign of contamination, you must dismiss the entire jury.”

“But his (Kartel’s) case should not have gone to the Privy Council if we had in place a system that records judgments of our own Court of Appeal because if it had somebody could have looked on those judgments…,” he had said.

“Please note that the same way the Privy Council streams it’s hearings live so does the Caribbean court of Justice.  So 62 years after our independence, it is more than overdue for Jamaica to depend no longer on an order in councel to abolish the monarchy and to vest the judicial arm with the full authority to dispense justice for all as we seek to develop a Caribbean Jurisprudence…,” Patterson had added. 

In a letter to the Gleaner which was published in November last year, titled “Privy Council here to serve Jamaicans,” President of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), Lord Reed, had noted that he and his collegues on the JCPC, were honoured to serve the people of Jamaica as the island’s highest court and takes this “major responsibility” very seriously.

Lord Reed’s letter which was in response to an earlier Gleaner editorial titled  ‘Loitering at the Privy Council,” had sought to reassure Jamaicans that seeking justice was not as expensive as it was being made out to be.

“Your editorial also mentions the difficulty and expense of having to travel to London for hearings. I would like to convey to your readers that the court is not as remote or inaccessible as they may have imagined. For example, we offer hearings online, so that lawyers can address us from their offices in Jamaica, without having to incur the time and expense involved in travelling to London. So there is no reason for the costs involved in travelling to the UK to be a barrier to justice,” Lord Reed had noted.

“Further, the hearings that we hold in London are all streamed live on the Internet, and can also be watched on catch-up. We are possibly the easiest court in the world to watch in action. We are only a few clicks away on a computer or a mobile phone. Our aim is to make access to the JCPC as easy as possible, for all the people who bring cases to it,” he added.

According to the jurist, while the decision on whether to retain the JCPC is entirely one for the Jamaican Government and people, the Privy Council continues to consider it a privilege to serve as the final court of appeal, unless and until Jamaica decides otherwise.

“I must challenge the suggestion in your editorial that we consider that cases from outside the UK take up too much of our time. This could not be further from the truth. The volume of cases, and the place of their origin, are never a consideration when we decide which cases raise an arguable point of law and should be heard by the court. In the year 2022-23, we heard 62 cases in the JCPC across the year,, compared to 50 UK Supreme Court cases. Eight of those JCPC cases were from Jamaica,” he stated.