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Radio Jamaica's legal analyst Dionne Jackson Miller reports
By Dionne Jackson Miller
Prosecutors on Thursday struggled to answer questions from the Court of Appeal about the impact of the factors which have to be considered in deciding whether there should be a retrial in the Vybz Kartel murder case.
The prosecution is tasked with trying to convince the Court that it should order that Adidja 'Vybz Kartel' Palmer, Kahira Jones, Andre St. John, and Shawn Campbell be retried for the murder of Clive 'Lizard' Williams.
The prosecutors argued Thursday that factors like the cost of a new trial, the availability of prosecution witnesses, and unavailability of defence witnesses should all be resolved in favour of a new trial for Vybz Kartel and his three co-accused.
But when pressed to elaborate by presiding judge Marva McDonald Bishop, they often struggled to respond.
When questioned about how the court should look at the expense of a new trial, Acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Claudette Thompson said the state has to bear the cost of a new trial in the interests of justice.
She said she did not know if one could put a price on justice. But Justice McDonald Bishop replied that this is the law, and that's what the court has to do.
Lawyers for the accused men have argued that their handwriting expert has died, so they would be in a worse positon than the first trial.
The acting DPP's response was that the expert had been cross-examined in length and that material would be available for a second trial.
When asked by the judge if she didn't accept that the inability to see a witness and judge their demeanour was a drawback of paper trials, the acting DPP said that would be a different position, but she did not accept that it would be a worse position.
The issue of the availability of prosecution witnesses was of concern to the court, as the acting DPP quoted from an affidavit from Senior Deputy DPP Jeremy Taylor saying most of the witnesses would be available for a second trial.
The judge had concerns that the availability of each witness had not been specified, and then said the court would not be sending any matter back to the Supreme Court for it to then emerge that witnesses were unavailable.
The acting DPP later referred the court to a table in response, but did not indicate what the table said.
There have been several indications that the court is looking at this matter as a seminal case, with Justice McDonald Bishop declaring that "This case is the microscope, the lens on the judicial system."
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