Attorneys representing embattled entertainer Vybz Kartel say it was a miscarriage of justice when the judge presiding over the deejay’s murder case ordered jurors to deliberate their verdict after 3 o’clock.
According to the deejay’s legal team, the judge’s decision to send the jury to deliberate its verdict after the benchmark 3 o’clock, which adopted by Jamaican courts, created unnecessary pressure for jurors to arrive at an “unsafe verdict.”
The assertion was made by Kartel’s lead attorney Valerie Neita-Robertson during her closing arguments in the entertainer’s appeal trial on Tuesday.
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Neita-Robertson claims presiding judge, Justice Lennox Campbell should have ordered the jury consider their verdict the following day.
Trial transcripts reveal that the 11-member jury was directed to commence their deliberations at 3:42 pm on March 13, 2014, and returned at 5:35 p.m, but was sent back at 5:46 p.m. to continue their deliberations.
The jury returned at 6:02 p.m with a 10-1 majority verdict, convicting Vybz Kartel and his co-accused Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John of the murder of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams.
