Valerie Neita Robertson - file photo
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Attorney-at-law Valerie Neita Robertson
A victory for her client in one court case has convinced a leading Jamaican attorney that the country should retain the UK based Privy Council as the country's appellate court.
Valerie Neita Robertson, QC, responding to Monday's Privy Council decision to overturn the murder conviction of her client, Lescene Edwards, said it had convinced her of the value of retaining the country's links with that British judicial institution.
In quashing the conviction, the UK law lords said a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred in the case of Edwards, a former police constable.
Mrs Neita Roberston told Radio Jamaica News that she was hurt by the fact that Mr. Edwards did not obtain justice in Jamaica.
The former policeman was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for the murder of his girlfriend Aldonna Harris-Vasquez in 2003.
She died from a single gunshot wound to the head and a suicide note was found at the scene.
Fresh evidence presented to the Privy Council showed that when the fatal shot was fired, Mrs Harris Vasquez was seated on the bathroom floor with her back against the closed door.
The judges said there was no evidence to explain how the defendant could have managed to kill her in the confined space, then move the body and open the door without getting any blood on himself or outside the bathroom.
Neita Robertson was a candidate for a seat in the Jamaican Parliament in 2020 on the ticket of the People's National Party (PNP) which has long advocated Jamaica severing ties with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, the Jamaican Government took steps to join the appellate division of the then newly established Caribbean Court of Justice.
This decision was challenged in the courts and, on appeal, the Privy Council, in a judgment delivered on February 3, 2005, ruled that the procedures used to do so were unconstitutional and therefore rendered it null and void.
Observing that "justice has no colour, no race and no nationality," Neita Robertson asserted that she was "now convinced that we need to keep the Privy Council in Jamaica, so that we can be assured of justice in matters like this."
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