THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM :

Jamaican law is very clear regard­ing evi­dence. It is up to the Investigating offi­cer to make sure that evi­dence per­tain­ing to the case he or she inves­ti­gat­ed is brought before the Court. Each time the Evidence is brought to court it is hand­ed to the pros­e­cut­ing Attorney. If and when the case is set for a future date, the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer takes pos­ses­sion of the item/​s of evi­dence and return it to the sta­tion where it is hand­ed over to the offi­cer in charge of the Evidence room, where it is signed back into pro­tec­tive cus­tody. The process is reversed on the next court date.

I know there are bet­ter and more sophis­ti­cat­ed ways of deal­ing with evi­dence.. Our coun­try is not devel­oped yet, so it is what it is. The point of all this how­ev­er, is that as imper­fect as it is, there is absolute­ly no excuse for the pros­e­cu­tor to tell the court that evi­dence has dis­ap­peared or some­how can­not be found.

There has been a major devel­op­ment in the Vybz Kartel mur­der case as a key piece of evi­dence has gone miss­ing. Prosecutors have dis­closed that a com­pact disc or CD con­tain­ing tele­phone records can­not be locat­ed. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​5​0​437

Palmer

The pros­e­cu­tor did not explain where in the chain of cus­tody the breach occurred. Was this crit­i­cal piece of evi­dence in the care of the pros­e­cu­tion team when it dis­ap­peared or was it anoth­er case of police cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal col­lu­sion? It is impor­tant that this mat­ter be laid bare. Adija Palmer o/​c Vybz Kartel is fac­ing cap­i­tal mur­der . In the inter­est of Justice all evi­dence, both incrim­i­nat­ing and excul­pa­to­ry must be avail­able to the court, so that the cor­rect ver­dict may be arrived at. It is crit­i­cal in deter­min­ing the inno­cence or guilt of the accused as well as in the inter­est of jus­tice for the aggriev­ed fam­i­ly of the victim.

Kartel and oth­ers in a pho­to­graph bran­dish­ing guns before his arrest and the begin­ning of this case.

It can­not be that crit­i­cal evi­dence just dis­ap­pear with a sim­ple state­ment that it can­not be found. Who is in charge here? Are the inmates run­ning the Asylum? The absence of that crit­i­cal bit of evi­dence did not seem to be a sur­prise to Palmer’s Attorney Tom Tavares Finson. In fact it was Finson who asked the Court to have the Prosecutor show the cor­re­spond­ing disc which is crit­i­cal in explain­ing the one being tes­ti­fied to by a Digicel expert. Upon which the Prosecutor told the court the evi­dence was lost. Tavares-Finson then sug­gest­ed that since one of the CDs is miss­ing, the court would be unable to ver­i­fy the con­tents on the disc which was ten­dered into evidence.

Tom Finson

Was this crafty defense coun­sel have rea­son to believe that the disc was miss­ing, if so why? How could he pos­si­bly have known if he was­n’t privy to infor­ma­tion the court did not have, that some­how there was evi­dence tam­per­ing in this impor­tant case? As I asked before where in the chain of cus­tody did this evi­dence dis­ap­pear? Who was entrust­ed with it, was it the pros­e­cu­tor, we need to know? Was it the police? Whomever it is must be brought to court to explain and account. Who was respon­si­ble for the cus­tody of the Disc? There are estab­lished law­ful pro­to­cols ? This can­not be allowed to just die with the accused being set free. A crit­i­cal piece of evi­dence dis­s­a­peared, it can­not just be a return to busi­ness as usu­al. This is crim­i­nal­i­ty of the high­est order. My anger does not go to the guilt or inno­cence of the accused. This is big­ger than any one accused. This kind of ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is destroy­ing the sys­tem and is fuel­ing crime on the Island. It has to stop.