Magistrate: Not Guilty, But Is Kern Innocent ?

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.

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 SUN SENTINEL REPORT pro­vides details on the scheme. http://​arti​cles​.sun​-sen​tinel​.com/​1​990 – 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.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS.

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​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​5​1​860.

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.

“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.

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 .