James Charles Evers (born September 11, 1922) is an important civil rights advocate in the United States. The older brother of civil rights martyr Medgar Evers, Charles Evers is a leading civil rights spokesman within the Republican Party in his native Mississippi. He was the first African American elected since the Reconstruction era as mayor in a Mississippi city, in Fayette in 1969. He ran for governor in 1971 and theUnited States Senate in 1978, both times as an independent. Born in Decatur, Mississippi, Evers had a strong, devoutly Christian mother and father. During World War II, Charles and Medgar Evers both served in the U.S. Army. Charles fell in love with aFilipina woman overseas. They could not marry her and go to his native Mississippi because of her “white” skin color. Mississippi had enshrined Jim Crow rules in its constitution, which prohibited interracial marriages. In Mississippi about 1951, Charles and Medgar Evers grew interested in African freedom movements. They were interested in Jomo Kenyatta and the rise of the Kikuyu tribal resistance to colonialism in Kenya, known as the “Mau-Mau” Rebellion as it moved to open violence. Along with his brother, Charles became active in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights organization that also promoted self-help and business ownership. He drew inspiration from Dr. T.R.M. Howard, the president of the RCNL, who was one the wealthiest blacks in the state. Between 1952 and 1955, Evers often spoke at the RCNL’s annual conferences in Mound Bayou on such issues as voting rights. Around 1956, Evers’s entrepreneurial gifts and his civil rights activism landed him in trouble inPhiladelphia, Mississippi. He left town and moved to Chicago. There, he vowed to support the movement back home, and fell into a life of hustling, running numbers for the Mob, and managing prostitutes. The money he made was said to have been substantial, and much of it was sent back to help the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Byron De La Beckwith shot Medgar Evers as he arrived home from work. Evers died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Charles Evers was shocked and deeply upset by news of his brother’s death. Over the opposition of more establishment figures in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) like Roy Wilkins, Charles took over Medgar’s post as head of theNAACP in Mississippi. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Charles_Evers.html
Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. While growing up in a mostly European American town, W.E.B. Du Bois identified himself as “mulatto,” but freely attended school with whites and was enthusiastically supported in his academic studies by his white teachers. In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. He paid his way with money from summer jobs, scholarships and loans from friends. After completing his master’s degree, he was selected for a study-abroad program at the University of Berlin. While a pupil in Germany, he studied with some of the most prominent social scientists of his day and was exposed to political perspectives that he touted for the remainder of his life.Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, and went on to enroll as a doctoral student at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität). (He would be awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Humboldt decades later, in 1958.)http://www.biography.com/people/web-du-bois-9279924
Whose grand idea was it to investigate where there are no allegations of impropriety ‚or criminal misconduct? The Jamaica Constabulary Force certainly needs oversight. No one could reasonably disagree with the idea of oversight of Police Agencies and certainly not the (JCF). Oversight however should not be a witch-hunt with personal agendas . Why waste time and scarce resources looking for wrong-doing where there is none. Interestingly as is customary in Jamaica where everything is done incorrectly, that is exactly how they do business. The formation of the neophyte Agency , the Independent Commission of Investigation (INDECOM) does exactly that. The Agency’s head Terrence Williams the first to head the Agency has been little more than a power-hungry Media whore whose bid to become the Director of Public Prosecution fell flat. Since becoming Commissioner of this virgin Agency Williams seemed to relish in the idea of creating a rift between the new Agency and the JCF, to show Independence and prove his bona fides. In fact Williams made that point clear by attending a Press Conference with Carolyn Gomes then head of anti-police Antagonist group, Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ). That decision created much angst and consternation among members of the police department. If Terrence Williams wanted to deliberately create enemies , he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. That did not seem to bother Williams who has continued to seek out the media in a push for more power. Because of it’s lack of objectivity Jamaicans for Justice, is not taken seriously by objective observers. The group is largely supported and embraced by criminals and their supporters.
Despite Williams rapacious hunger for power and his pitiful pleas for more, INDECOM has been forced to concede that in the majority of cases it investigated, there was no wrong-doing on the part of officers. Now let me be clear, I am elated that this Elitist Agency is looking into police conduct. If INDECOM has the trust and confidence of the population then all the better for the blue-collar members of the JCF, who actually produce results for the pittance they are paid.
Peter and Portia Peter may have to explain it to Portia
The difference in countries like the US , Canada and the UK is that these countries believe in the rule of law. Their law-enforcement oversight takes nothing from the process it enhances the process. Officers get to do their jobs safe in the knowledge that as long as they follow the laws they are insulated from criminal prosecution. Can members of the JCF say the same? INDECOM snoops around every police shooting scene, this is a waste of time and scarce resources which could be more judiciously used. It creates the impression of wrong-doing , even when there are no allegations of any. Police Officers are removed from front-line duties on the flimsiest allegations made by any one police-hating witness. Many times these witnesses are manufactured. Anyone privy to the crime situation in Jamaica must gasp at this notion considering the level of support criminals get in this nation of 2.7 million.
PERSPECTIVE
1) Organized crime and other criminal elements are prevalent and extremely active. Most of the criminal activity is gang-related. The police have only resolved (make arrests) 44 percent of homicides annually, and they only convict perpetrators in five percent of the homicide cases. This leads both the public and police to doubt the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, leading to vigilantism, which exacerbates the cycle of violence. Based on their past experiences, most civilians fear that, at best, the authorities cannot protect them from organized criminal elements, and, at worst, are colluding with criminals, leading citizens to avoid giving evidence or witness testimonies.
2) Kingston is rated “Critical” for crime by the Department of State due to a high frequency of criminal activity throughout Jamaica. Violent crime is a serious problem, particularly in Kingston. In 2012, Kingston saw a reduction in the murder rate and other violent crimes. This reduction may be attributed to proactive police actions. There were 1,083 murders, 1,218 shootings, 763 carnal abuse, 833 rape, 2,679 robberies, 3,094 break-ins, 691 larceny cases recorded in 2012. With a population of approximately 2.7 million people, the number of murders and other violence places Jamaica in the top five tiers of the highest per capita homicide rates in the world.https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=14289
The inept Administration in Kingston is incapable of getting anything right. Crime is eating away at the fabric of the Country. It is believed even in International circles that crime is being supported by people who ought to be working toward its elimination (not the police). Someone in the Administration with a little brain, Peter Phillips now holding the Finance Portfolio maybe, please impress upon the Prime Minister in the simplest terms possible, that passing IMF tests is good for the IMF , but bad for the people.
Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips
The daily depreciation of the dollar is proof positive that things are not getting better. This economy is eventually going to crater, when it does the blame will be hung around your neck, despite the years of harm Omar Davies did. If you believe crime is high now wait a little longer when the country is forced to apply even more austerity to satisfy the puppeteers at IMF Headquarters. Peter Phillips you bucked the system before. Maybe you need to do it again for Country.
Kartel juror Livingston Cain in a queue waiting to be searched to enter the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court in Half Way Tree Friday morning. Cain made every possible attempt to avoid being captured on camera by photographers at the scene. (Photo: Paul Henry)
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Embattled juror in the Vybz Kartel murder trial, Livingston Cain, is to return to court on April 24. Cain appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court on Friday, March 28 to answer to bribery charges. He is accused of offering the jury foreman in the Kartel murder trial $500,000 for a not-guilty verdict. It is also alleged that Cain told another juror that he would “take care of him” if he returned a not-guilty verdict as well. Cain was the only juror to vote not guilty in the conviction of Vybz Kartel, Shaw ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, Andre St John, and Kahira Jones. A fifth man, Shane Williams, was acquitted. http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Kartel-juror-returns-to-court-on-April-24
Born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, Ralph D. Abernathy was a Baptist minister who, with Martin Luther King Jr., organized the historical Montgomery bus boycotts. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a major civil rights figure, serving as close adviser to King and later assuming SCLC presidency. Later returning to the ministry, Abernathy died on April 17, 1990, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Early Years
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, the 10th of 12 offspring born to Louivery Abernathy and William Abernathy, a farmer and deacon. Upon graduating from high school, Abernathy was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, subsequently leaving his family’s 500-acre farm.Following his military service, in 1948, Abernathy became an ordained minister while pursuing his education. He earned a mathematics degree from Alabama State College in 1950, and received a master’s degree in sociology from Atlanta University the following year. He then became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery and dean of students at Alabama State. He also married Juanita Odessa Jones; the two would have four children together. http://www.biography.com/people/ralph-d-abernathy-9174397
Joseph Lowery was born on October 6, 1921, in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1952, he became pastor for the Warren Street United Methodist Church in Mobile. There, he helped launch a drive to end discrimination in Mobile. In 1957, Lowery helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1968, he became the SCLC’s chairman. After retiring, he continued to fight against social injustice.“Work for that day … when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
Early Life
Born Joseph Echols Lowery on October 6, 1921, (some sources say 1924) in Huntsville, Alabama. For more than 50 years, Reverend Joseph Lowery has fought against prejudice and discrimination on behalf of the African-American community. He earned himself the nickname the “dean of the civil rights movement.” Lowery, the son of a teacher and a businessman, grew up in the segregated South. He knew firsthand the hardships and cruelty that many African-Americans experienced. At the age of 12, Lowery was beaten by a white police officer after he accidentally bumped into the law enforcement official. He graduated from high school in 1939 and then studied at several colleges, including Wayne State University and Knoxville College. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, Lowery followed a spiritual calling. He graduated from the Chicago Ecumenical Institute in 1950 with a doctorate in divinity.
Civil Rights Career
An ordained Methodist minister, Lowery returned to Alabama in 1952 to serve as pastor for the Warren Street United Methodist Church in Mobile. There, he became active in the emerging civil rights movement. Inspired by the resistance shown regarding the segregated busing system in Montgomery, Lowery helped launch a drive to end the same discriminatory practices in Mobile.
In 1957, Lowery worked with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became the organization’s vice president and helped the group with its efforts to fight for equality through nonviolent actions. Lowery stayed true to his convictions at a great personal cost at times.
He and several members of the SCLC were sued for libel by a Montgomery commissioner because of a 1960 newspaper ad that made critiques of the city’s police department. Lowery’s assets were seized when the court ruled against the SCLC members. They appealed the case, which was finally overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964. http://www.biography.com/people/joseph-lowery-11388
Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. After completing high school in 1925, Thurgood followed his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian “Buster” Burey. Their twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.
In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. Thurgood sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School that same year and came under the immediate influence of the dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in all of his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans. Paramount in Houston’s outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, “separate but equal.” Marshall’s first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray. Applauding Marshall’s victory, author H.L. Mencken wrote that the decision of denial by the University of Maryland Law School was “brutal and absurd,” and they should not object to the “presence among them of a self-respecting and ambitious young Afro-American well prepared for his studies by four years of hard work in a class A college.“http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm
“We are the ones we have been waiting for” a rallying cry Barack Obama used in his quest to becoming America’s 44th President. All of us have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it when we arrived. The question we must ask ourselves is,” are we doing anything, much less enough to change the things which we see are wrong”? Someone once asked ’ how can a single person make a difference”? The answer, ask a person being bugged by a mosquito ! Everyone of us can make a difference, we make a difference in the way we cast our votes, responsibly and not emotionally. We make a difference in the way we raise our children. We make a difference in the way we treat others. We make a difference in the way we present ourselves to the world. We fail as a specie to take responsibility for our actions. We fail in recognizing that we the people determines our own destiny. Yes it begins in the homes, it continues in how we dispense adult functions such as voting. If we continue to act emotionally when we vote , how will we ever have responsible, capable and moral leaders? If we allow the party we favor to be safe in the belief, that irrespective of the corruption, graft, and incompetence it delivers we will simply put them back in office,why would they change?
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” YESWECAN!!
attainable
If when we vote we choose people with questionable morals how can we complain when they deliver immorality?When we elect leaders who have demonstrated that they are incapable of delivering on the most basic of requirements, how can we be surprised when our standard of living continue to deteriorate? How do we expect the Police to react to us when we offer them bribes to let us off when we break the laws, Aren’t we the ones corrupting them?
How do we expect to end corruption if we remain silent when public officials demand pay-offs? How do we expect respect, when we hurl abuse and insults at those appointed to enforce laws which are in place for our own protection? How do so many people move to live in countries where the fundamentals of a civilized society are practiced, yet cheer-lead and support anarchy in the country of their births? Isn’t it selfish and hypocritical when we reap the fruits of order, yet we sow the seeds of anarchy? Just asking ?
Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks.
Myrlie Evers mourns the death of her husband
On JunRenowned civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II, and received an honorable discharge in 1946. In 1948, he entered Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley. They later had three children: Darrell, Reena and James.e 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated outside of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Born in 1933, Myrlie Evers-Williams was the wife of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers. While fighting to bring his killer to justice, Evers-Williams also continued her husband’s work with her book, For Us, The Living. She also wrote Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be. Evers-Williams served as chair of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998.Born Myrlie Louise Beasley on March 17, 1933, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Raised by her grandmother, a schoolteacher, Evers-Williams loved learning and music. Growing up in the segregated South, she went to Alcorn A&M College, one of the only colleges in the state that accepted African American students. While at Alcorn, she met Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran several years her senior. The couple fell in love and married in December of 1951.
Myrlie with President Barack Obama
When her husband became the Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Evers-Williams worked alongside him. She assisted him as he strove to end the unjust practice of racial segregation in schools and other public facilities and campaigned for voting rights as many African Americans were denied this right in the South. Medgar made enemies of those who didn’t want race relations in the South to change. On June 12, 1963, Medger Evers was shot to death in front of his home by a white supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith.
Stokely Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on June 29, 1941. Carmichael rose to prominence as a member and later the chairman of SNCC, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern leaders to stage protests. Carmichael later lost faith in the tactic of non-violence, promoting “Black Power” and allying himself with the militant Black Panther Party.Famed civil rights leader StokelyCarmichael was born on June 29, 1941, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Carmichael’s parents immigrated to New York when he was a toddler, leaving him in the care of his grandmother until the age of 11, when he followed his parents to the United States. His mother, Mabel, was a stewardess for a steamship line, and his father, Adolphus, worked as a carpenter by day and a taxi driver by night. An industrious and optimistic immigrant, Adolphus Carmichael chased a version of the American Dream that his son would later criticize as an instrument of racist economic oppression. As Stokely Carmichael later said, “My old man believed in this work-and-overcome stuff. He was religious, never lied, never cheated or stole. He did carpentry all day and drove taxis all night& The next thing that came to that poor black man was death — from working too hard. And he was only in his 40s.“http://www.biography.com/people/stokely-carmichael-9238629.
Malaysian officials announced Wednesday that a satellite has captured images of 122 objects in the Indian Ocean that might be from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, missing since March 8. According to acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the objects were seen close to where three other satellites had previously detected possible aircraft debris. He added that the sightings are “the most credible lead that we have.“Hussein said the satellite images, which were taken Sunday and relayed by France-based Airbus Defense and Space, showed objects ranging in size from one to 25 yards in length. “It must be emphasized that we cannot tell whether the potential objects are from MH370. Nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation,” Hussein said. The hunt for Flight MH370 has turned up various floating objects spotted by planes and satellites, but thus far none have been retrieved or identified.
The desperate, multinational search for the jetliner, which disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board, resumed on Wednesday after inclement weather over the Indian Ocean temporary halted efforts the previous day.A total of 12 planes and two ships from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were participating in the search, hoping to find even a single piece of the jet that could offer tangible evidence of a crash.
Members of the Jamaica Police Force have a very tough road to hoe. They are asked to put their lives on the line in defense of some of the most criminal-loving people to be found anywhere. How did Jamaica get there you ask? Jamaica got there because of political interference in law-enforcement. This created an attitude which says, if you are connected, strong , powerful, or a bad-man you can simply bad man your way through the system and no one will dare touch you. This attitude started around the time Michael Manley became Prime Minister in 1972. His rhetoric was one which was construed to mean, one could simply take whatever one wanted, whether you own it or not.
Michael Manley
The period between 1972 when Michael Manley’s was elected to office and 1980 when he was booted from it, was the most tumultuous period in Jamaica’s modern history. High prices, run-away crime, food shortages and a general ideological and moral shift in the direction of our country. Today Jamaica is reaping the bitter fruits of that shift. The Jamaica of today is one where the mention of the word “God” to many, is a dirty word. It is a Jamaica which indulges in lascivious and Hedonistic pleasures. A Jamaica opposed to authority, yet hell-bent on death and destruction. At the Genesis of this shift, crime escalated under Manley, it got so bad, his administration was forced to build the Gun Court and institute a state of Emergency. At the heart of those actions , is the certitude of my arguments. When you create a feeling in people that they can do as they please, They do as they please. At the same time Manley was building the Gun-Court his goons were actively engaged in march up to police stations and forcibly removing criminals from police custody. This was unprecedented in Jamaica. This kind of thuggery was unknown to the country under the leadership of its former Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer of the Labor Party. Shearer would tolerate none of that behavior, he gave police a free hand to go after the criminals wherever they were.
Bruce Golding
Unfortunately for Jamaica ‚the labor party, seeking to strike a counter balance, built and maintained two premier garrisons during that time . Tivoli Gardens and Wilton Gardens(Rema). After Seaga won in 1980 he did not stand in the way of the Police doing their duties. There was one caveat of course, Tivoli Gardens was out of bounds. I entered Law Enforcement as a fresh-faced idealist who believed I could change the world, wanting to do good. I wanted to give people the opportunity to live their lives having the freedom to go wherever they chose to in their own country without the peril of imminent death. As a High school kid I saw what Political violence did to our country. I wanted to be a part of changing it. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that nothing I could do as a police officer would ever change Jamaica for the better. I recognized pretty early that the corruption was at the top , and the stream was already way too contaminated. I made plans to exit and was out fully in 10 years.
Despite the relative calm of the Seaga years of the 80’s the writing was on the wall. The people had tasted the fruits of the Manley ideology, freeness, do what you want. law enforcement will not be allowed to touch you. Take people’s property through force of arms. Receive money for no work. The general lawlessness of the 70’s was too strong a lure to resist. The labor party was booted from office in 1989 and Michael Manley was returned to office, despite the unmitigated disaster which were his previous two terms.
Bunting Miller and Patterson
What resulted after was an unprecedented 18 1⁄2 years of PNP rule which drove the nail in the economic and social coffin of Jamaica. Punctured only by a brief 4 ‑year interlude when Bruce Golding and the JLP was elected to office by a razor-thin margin of victory in 2007. By 2011 the PNP was back in office under the leadership of Portia Simpson Miller, who Golding had beaten just 4 years prior. Today only about 13% of the nations people are in the middle-class. A shocking 83% of the people are living below the poverty line. All of this, after 28 years of People’s National Rule of the last four decades.Corruption is the hall-mark of the Administration. Rating Agency Transparency International rated Jamaica 84% corrupt. Crime will not be heading south anytime soon. The courts cannot be trusted to dispense equitable and fair justice. Despite our best hopes, there are large chunks of the Jamaican population who are simply above the laws. A huge chunk of the populace, both at home and in the diaspora are supportive of criminality and chaos. Some living abroad actively fund crime there. Jamaica is experiencing the bitter fruits of the Manley doctrine.
From the offset the odds of justice being served in the Kern Spencer criminal trial was next to zero. Yet despite the odds many Jamaicans including myself, hoped that maybe this time , just this once, a Jamaican politician would be held accountable for just the second time in our history. Kern Spencer walked out of Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey’s Court-room, a free man ‚our hopes dashed , it was not to be.
Kern SpencerColeen Wright
In retrospect I ask myself “what was your hope based on”? There was hardly any precedent in support of that hope. In fact, only one Politician, JAG Smith, former Labor Minister in a 1980’s JLP Administration was ever sent to prison for stealing Farm Workers hard-earned savings. Had he cooperated and paid back the money it would have been swept under the rug and he would not have gone to prison. Ironically it was Portia Simpson Miller the current Prime Minister, then Minister of Labor ‚who pushed for the investigations. This 1990 SUNSENTINELREPORT provides details on the scheme. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1990 – 04-01/business/9002010438_1_farm-worker-program-foreign-guest-workers-bank-accounts.
Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey’s decision to dispose of the case by way of Defense’s No case submission motion, smack of arrogance and bravado. I believe her actions have been the most egregious I have ever seen coming from the bench in Jamaica. It smells like a smack-down of chief Prosecutor Paula Llewellyn, I get the last laugh. I know Jamaica is corrupt to the core, but this is the most galling I have ever seen. It is a sad day for our country, particularly when the verdict of dance-hall Disc Jockey Adijia Palmer o/c Vybez Kartel was Guilty. It further cements the popularly-held belief that the laws do not apply to those with political power.
SEQUENCEOFEVENTS.
1] The Cuban Government donated a quantity of energy-saving light bulbs to the Jamaican people. Four million light bulbs were to be distributed to residents and the project was handed to Spencer who was Junior Energy Minister. Spencer along with his former personal assistant, Coleen Wright was freed on Monday by Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey in the Corporate Area Criminal Court, of the charges of corruption and money laundering.
2] The project was implemented in July 2006. Allegations of irregularities in the project were leveled against Spencer in Parliament in November 2007 by then Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who asked the auditor-general and the contractor-general to probe the matter Clive Mullings, told Parliament that $114 million was improperly spent on the distribution of four million energy-saving light bulbs donated by the Cuban Government to the people of Jamaica.
3] In January 2008, the auditor-general reported that about 176,380 of the four million bulbs, costing approximately $92 million, could not be accounted for. There was also an absence of an effective system of budgetary control resulting in the making of payments and the incurring of unpaid obligations of $185.3 million over the approved financial support. On 26 February 2008 Kern Spencer was arrested and slapped with seven charges. He is facing three charges of conspiracy to defraud, one charge for breaching the Prevention of Corruption Act, and three charges for breaching the Money Laundering Act. Spencer spent the night in jail and remained behind bars until he was able to post bail on 29 February 2008.
4] Contractor General Greg Christie released the findings of a probe by his office, which pointed to several breaches of government procurement guidelines and legislative provisions.
5]Spencer, Colleen Wright, his former personal assistant, and businessman Rodney Chin arrested on charges of money laundering, conspiracy to defraud and breaches of the Corruption Prevention Act .The Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, the state-owned company that financed the light bulb project, announced that Rodney Salmon, its director of administration and corporate secretary, had been relieved of his duties as a result of the light bulb saga. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/latest/article.php?id=51860.
6] April 12, 2010 Prosecutors decided to use Rodney Chin as a witness for the Crown. Chin revealed, under cross-examination by Spencer’s then attorney Patrick Atkinson, that he met with Llewellyn and police investigators at the offices of his attorney in 2009 and was interviewed and notes taken.
7] April 12, 2010 Defence attorneys serve Llewellyn with subpoena to obtain information about what transpired at the meeting. The Magistrate also orders Llewellyn to remain out of court during Chin’s testimony.
8] April 13, 2010 – September 3, 2013 Trial is placed on hold as Llewellyn applies to the Judicial Review Court to quash Pusey’s order . The Judicial Review Court ruled against Pusey. Not satisfied Pusey in an unprecedented move, appealed the decision. The The Appeal Court ruled in favor of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP.
Critical evidence recovered from an apartment occupied by Coleen Wright was ruled inadmissible by Judith Pusey, even though Wright lied to investigators that she did not have keys to the apartment on her arrival when the police attempted to gain entry to the premises. She handed over the keys only after she was told a locksmith would be called to secure entry for the police. This was given in evidence by Police Investigator Errington Malcolm. During those testimonies Defense attorney KD Knight accused the Prosecution of inefficiency. Retired Deputy Superintendent Errington Malcolm had just completed his testimony about the search of the apartment and was about to be cross-examined by defense attorneys when lead prosecutor Paula Llewellyn informed the court that she intended to recall him to identify the warrant and have it admitted into evidence.
Spencer and Wright with Attorney KD Knight
“I hate inefficiency, especially in the shape and form I am seeing it, Knight exclaimed.“In reference to the DPP’S comments ‚Judith Pusey chimed in, quote: “I feel your pain”. Just one of the many instances when the magistrate exercised contempt for the prosecution and the process. Tragically Jamaica’s Laws are archaic and outdated. The people selected to legislate are themselves criminals, so nothing gets done. On the few days they show up for the horse and pony show in the Parliament, they merely bang on desks and hurl insults at each other. There is no provision in Jamaican Law which gives the prosecutor the power to appeal a decision. In a country as corrupt as Jamaica this creates a breeding ground for more corruption.
No good was done to the Justice system in Jamaica yesterday. The justice system continue to be on trial. It’s no secret I have commented on this case from its inception. There is no secret I predicted that this would be the outcome. Readers of these Blogs may go back and look at the many Articles I have written detailing why Kern Spencer would be set free. As I said in one of my latest comment, what is most egregious about this case, is that a single member of the once esteemed Judiciary, has unilaterally hijacked the process , making a mockery of it. Throughout the process Judith Pusey made it clear that anyone wanting to send Kern Spencer to Prison would have to go through her. Judith Pusey made a mockery of our justice system.
A jubilant Spencer and Wright after being freed by Judith Pusey
We haven’s seen the entirety of the evidence, what we have seen is the posture of this Magistrate. We have heard her utterances, we believe her actions telegraphed the decisions she announced yesterday. Whether there was anything untoward on the part of Judith Pusey in this case that would rise to corruption or serious inappropriate behavior we may never know. What we do know is that Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey gave the Judiciary a horrible black eye .
New data from a French satellite shows potential debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean, France’s foreign ministry says. Radar echoes had picked up several objects about 2,300km (1,430 miles) from Perth, a statement added.
It is the third possible sighting in the area off western Australia that has become the focus of the search effort. Flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.
Malaysian officials believe the plane was deliberately taken off course. Based on information received from a satellite, the search has been in two distinct corridors — one stretching to the north-west of the last known location in the Malacca Straits and one to the south-west. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26705073
Nato’s top military commander warns of the size and readiness of Russia’s forces on Ukraine’s border, but Russia says it has no “expansionist views. http://www.bbc.com/news/
Turkey shoots down a Syrian military jet it says violated its airspace, but Damascus calls this “blatant aggression” and says the jet was over Syrian territory. http://www.bbc.com/news/
Rohan ‘Stone’ Reid and Damion ‘Bruno’ Walker were slapped with the sentence by Justice Bertram Morrison in the Home Circuit Court. Walker is to serve 35 years of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole, while Reid was ordered to be paroled after serving 30 years. The men, who are of Kingston addresses, were convicted by a panel of 12 jurors for the home invasion murder of Clive Baker and his common-law wife Camille Daley on the morning of July 11, 2011. The couple was home at 4 Park Lane, off Red Hills Road, with their seven-month-old baby when the men invaded the premises. Baker ran but was chased and shot. Daley was shot several times under her bed with the baby where she attempted to escape the killers. The baby was shot in the hand. http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Two-killers-sent-to-prison_16325521
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The desperate, multinational search for the jetliner, which disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board, resumed on Wednesday after inclement weather over the Indian Ocean temporary halted efforts the previous day.A total of 12 planes and two ships from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were participating in the search, hoping to find even a single piece of the jet that could offer tangible evidence of a crash.
Malaysian officials believe the plane was deliberately taken off course. Based on information received from a satellite, the search has been in two distinct corridors — one stretching to the north-west of the last known location in the Malacca Straits and one to the south-west. 
The couple was home at 4 Park Lane, off Red Hills Road, with their seven-month-old baby when the men invaded the premises. Baker ran but was chased and shot. Daley was shot several times under her bed with the baby where she attempted to escape the killers. The baby was shot in the hand.