HOW LONG BEFORE JUSTICE IS SERVED?

The Cuban Light Bulb case is back before the Courts in Jamaica. This is a sim­ple case which involves defen­dants Kern Spencer a for­mer Junior Minister of the PNP Administration and his per­son­al assis­tant Colleen Wright. Spencer and Wright are on tri­al for illic­it enrich­ment and mon­ey laun­der­ing, aris­ing from the imple­men­ta­tion of the Cuban light bulb pro­gram. For those not famil­iar with this case, it is a sim­ple case alleg­ing that Kern Spencer a Minister of Government and his assis­tant ‚tasked with super­vis­ing the hand­out of light-bulbs to Jamaican house­holds, ille­gal­ly enriched them­selves with pro­ceeds of said light-bulbs. The ener­gy con­serv­ing bulbs were a gift to the Jamaican peo­ple from the Cuban Government.

Wright and Spencer

The case has seen sev­er­al twists and turns, with one par­tic­u­lar glar­ing first. The tri­al Magistrate Judith Pusey adopt­ing a pos­ture in the tri­al almost reserved for defense lawyers. Pusey has removed her­self as an impar­tial arbiter of facts in this non-jury tri­al, demand­ing that the Director Of Public Prosecution Paula Llewellyn, the Prosecutor tes­ti­fy in the case. Llewellyn cor­rect­ly refused. Pusey chal­lenged the Prosecutor’s right to use one accused as a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness against Spencer and Wright, a right the Prosecutor has in law.

Defense Lawyer Kd Knight, l‑r , Kern Spencer cen­ter, and Colleen Wright

The Magistrate then ruled that the Prosecutor could not be in the court room when it’s own wit­ness Rodney Chin was giv­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny. Paula Llewellyn went to the High Court. The Supreme Court held that the Senior RM had no author­i­ty to instruct that Llewellyn leave the court­room when chief pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness Rodney Chin was tes­ti­fy­ing. Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey dis­sat­is­fied with the rul­ing of the Supreme Court, went to the Court of Appeals to have the order rescind­ed. In a unan­i­mous deci­sion, the Court of Appeal upheld the Supreme Court’s rul­ing and threw out Pusey’s application.
The appeals court also said the Cuban light-bulb tri­al, which has been stalled, should now go ahead.

The Lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the accused is none oth­er than KD Knight a sit­ting Senator of the said PNP Administration of Portia Simpson Miller. I know many of you are con­fused by now at what you have just read. Do not be con­fused this is busi­ness as usu­al in the Island of Jamaica.

The tri­al has restart­ed and a bank­ing wit­ness, Sasha Neil-Elliott tes­ti­fied that the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar wire trans­fer was done five days after Spencer and his co-accused, Colleen Wright, used cash total­ing $3.25 mil­lion to open a fixed deposit account at the finan­cial insti­tu­tion on July 25, 2007. Elliott, who was led through her evi­dence by lead pros­e­cu­tor Paula Llewellyn, gave evi­dence that on July 30, Spencer and Wright returned to the finan­cial insti­tu­tion with cash amount­ing to $3 mil­lion and opened a sec­ond fixed deposit account. She said the for­mer junior ener­gy min­is­ter informed her that the pur­pose of the accounts was to secure a loan. The JNBS cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive tes­ti­fied that while she was com­plet­ing the arrange­ments to open the sec­ond fixed deposit account, Spencer indi­cat­ed that he want­ed to take out two loans for $2.25 mil­lion each. According to Elliott’s tes­ti­mo­ny, the mon­ey was trans­ferred to a Florida bank account for Land Rover North Dade, locat­ed in Miami Lakes, Florida.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​9​1​2​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​3​.​h​tml.

I have been fol­low­ing this case from the very begin­ning. Have writ­ten exten­sive­ly in these blogs about this case. It is a trav­es­ty and an affront to the intel­li­gence of all Jamaicans that a Judge could be this polit­i­cal and sub­se­quent­ly moral­ly unfit for the office she holds. Every day we hear of Police offi­cers betray­ing their oath, where is the out­rage for this politi­cian and this Magistrate? Where is the dis­gust for this immoral Administration ? How can any­one get on social media and post fluff arti­cles about sup­posed pos­i­tives in the coun­try when the heart of the coun­try is rot­ting and decay­ing further?