Derek Achong

Dance­hall mu­sic fans breathed a sigh of re­lief as the Privy Coun­cil up­held the fi­nal ap­peal brought by Ja­maican su­per­star Adid­ja "Vy­bz Kar­tel" Palmer and three men over their con­vic­tions for mur­der.

De­liv­er­ing their judg­ment min­utes ago, five Lord Laws of the Unit­ed King­dom-based court up­held the ap­peal from Palmer and his co-ac­cused.

The out­come of the case does not mean that the pop­u­lar artist and his co-ac­cused were freed.

While the ap­peal pan­el agreed to quash their con­vic­tions, it re­mit­ted the case back to Ja­maica's Court of Ap­peal to de­cide whether the group should face a re­tri­al.

The Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing was main­ly based on how the judge as­signed to their case han­dled al­le­ga­tions of ju­ry mis­con­duct, which arose on the fi­nal day of the tri­al.

It ruled that the judge failed to con­sid­er that ju­rors may have want­ed to over­com­pen­sate and con­vict the men af­ter be­ing of­fered a bribe to ac­quit them by a fel­low ju­ror.

"The judge took no ac­count of this risk," the board said.

In March 2014, Palmer, fel­low dance­hall artiste Shawn "Shawn Storm" Camp­bell, Kahi­ra Jones, and An­dre St John were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Clive "Lizard" Williams af­ter fac­ing the longest tri­al in Ja­maican his­to­ry, which last­ed 64 days.

Williams was al­leged to have been killed at a house in Haven­dale, St An­drew, af­ter he failed to re­turn two un­li­censed firearms which were re­port­ed­ly giv­en to him by Palmer for safe­keep­ing.

His body was nev­er found.

The men each re­ceived life sen­tences with Jus­tice Lennox Camp­bell (no re­la­tion) set­ting vary­ing min­i­mum sen­tences they must serve be­fore el­i­gi­ble for re­lease on pa­role.

Palmer was giv­en a 35-year min­i­mum sen­tence, while Camp­bell and Jones were each giv­en a 25-year min­i­mum term. St John would be el­i­gi­ble af­ter serv­ing 15 years.

In April 2020, Ja­maica's Court of Ap­peal re­ject­ed the group's ap­peal over their con­vic­tions but agreed to slight re­duc­tions of their min­i­mum prison terms.

The group's le­gal team mount­ed a two-pronged ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

First­ly, they chal­lenged telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ev­i­dence re­lat­ed to their client's cel­lu­lar phones, which played a ma­jor part in the pros­e­cu­tion's case against them.

They claimed that the po­lice's re­quest to re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­ny Dig­i­cel and the com­pa­ny's even­tu­al fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the re­quest breached the Ja­maican In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act.

They al­so con­tend­ed that the ev­i­dence breached their client's right to pro­tec­tion of pri­va­cy of com­mu­ni­ca­tion un­der the fun­da­men­tal rights char­ter of the Ja­maican Con­sti­tu­tion.

Dur­ing the hear­ing of the ap­peal, last month, more fo­cus was placed on the group's sec­ondary chal­lenge over Jus­tice Camp­bell's han­dling of a ju­ror, who was found to have of­fered a JA$500,000 bribe to the ju­ry fore­man to in­flu­ence the oth­er ju­rors to find the men not guilty.

The ju­ror, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Liv­ingston Caine, was sub­se­quent­ly con­vict­ed of at­tempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice and sen­tenced to nine months in prison.

Their lawyers claimed that the judge should have dis­charged the ju­ry and or­dered a re­tri­al as they sug­gest­ed that knowl­edge of the bribe of­fer may have led the ju­ry to re­turn with a 10 to one ma­jor­i­ty ver­dict.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the pros­e­cu­tion, last month, King's Coun­sel Pe­ter Knox claimed that Jus­tice Camp­bell's han­dling of the tri­al could not be fault­ed as he is­sued strong warn­ings to the ju­ry af­ter Caine's con­duct was dis­cov­ered short­ly be­fore they were al­lowed to de­lib­er­ate.

"De­fen­dants can't de­rail tri­als just by mak­ing bribes to ju­ries," Knox said, as he not­ed that a re­tri­al could still be fa­cil­i­tat­ed if the ap­peal is up­held.

In re­sponse, King's Coun­sel Hugh Southey, who led the group's le­gal team, re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that the men should face a sec­ond tri­al based on the pas­sage of time and the high-pro­file na­ture of the case.

"Those dif­fi­cul­ties have not di­min­ished, they have be­come greater be­cause of the pas­sage of time. This is some­thing that is now high pro­file...A fair tri­al is now very dif­fi­cult and im­pos­si­ble we would sub­mit," Southey told that five-mem­ber pan­el last month.

His views on the re­tri­al were echoed by an­oth­er mem­ber of the group's le­gal team Isat Buchanan.

"There's no rem­e­dy, no con­sid­er­a­tion for a re­tri­al or a sec­ond chance," Buchanan said.

The pos­si­ble pos­i­tive out­come for Palmer and his co-ac­cused was fore­shad­owed in a se­ries of posts on Palmer's of­fi­cial In­sta­gram ac­count af­ter the Privy Coun­cil an­nounced the date of its de­ci­sion, last week.

One of the posts was a clip of Palmer's last per­for­mance in T&T be­fore his in­car­cer­a­tion at Great Fete Week­end in To­ba­go in 2011.

"To­ba­go u ready?," the post, which re­ceived 23,424 likes and 1,138 com­ments, up to late yes­ter­day, stat­ed.

An­oth­er post paid homage to the group's le­gal team as it list­ed the names of the lawyers and stat­ed: "Big up the ac­tu­al lawyers on this ap­peal."