(CMR) Jamaican dancehall artist Vybz Kartel (48), who was convicted for the murder of an associate in 2014, had his conviction quashed on Thursday, with the UK Privy Council ruling that attempts to bribe the trial jury meant the conviction was unsafe.
Kartel, whose real name is Adidja Palmer, has been in jail in Jamaica since 2011 over the disappearance of Clive “Lizard” Williams, whose body has never been found.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 35 years, later reduced on appeal to 32-and-a-half.
Last month, Kartel and his co-defendants mounted an appeal at the Privy Council in London. Their lawyers argued that the trial judge wrongly handled allegations that one juror offered 500,000 Jamaican dollars to fellow jurors to return not-guilty verdicts.
In allowing the appeal on Thursday, Judge David Lloyd-Jones said the trial judge's decision to allow the juror alleged to have offered bribes to continue on the jury was “fatal to the safety of the convictions.”
While the possibility exists, this does not mean the artist will be freed. The Privy Council has sent the case back to the Jamaica Court of Appeal to decide whether Kartel and three others, convicted in 2014, will be retried. If a retrial is ordered, the whole process will have to start all over, giving the artist a chance to be bailed while awaiting trial.
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