JURORS FOR KARTEL’S TRIAL WERE CONTACTED BY PHONE

SUGGESTIONS were made yesterday that jurors in the murder trial of Vybz Kartel were contacted by telephone to sit on the trial that ended with the conviction of the entertainer and three co-accused last year.

Defence attorney Valerie Neita-Robertson made the suggestions to a witness in the perverting the course of justice trial of Livingston Cain, who was the only juror in the Vybz Kartel case to vote not guilty in the men’s conviction.

The witness, who said she has served as a juror over a 34-year span, denied the suggestions, while at the same time admitting that she had in fact received telephone calls instead of summons whenever she’ was asked to serve as a juror.

Asked by Neita-Robertson if she had got a call from the Supreme Court to serve as juror on the Vybz Kartel case, she said ‘no’.

“You said so in the presence of other jurors,” Neita-Roberson suggested, but the witness insisted she had not.

The lawyer suggested, too, that other jurors had said they received telephone calls to serve on the high-profile case but the witness said she didn’t hear about that.

The woman also denied suggestions that she had been friends with a number of the jurors she served with during the Vybz Kartel trial.

During Neita-Robertson’s examination of the witness, the attorney was able to bring out the fact that the witness had said a number of things that she didn’t put in her statement.

Asked at one point by Neita-Robertson to explain this, the witness said in one instance that it may have been a misunderstanding on her part. At another point she said she told the police all she said in her evidence before the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

Caine is being tried on five counts of perverting the course of justice and a count of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Yesterday, during her evidence-in-chief led by the prosecution, the witness testified that Caine was angry when he wasn’t selected to be foreman in the Vybz Kartel trial.

In the juror room, Cain got up and said, ‘Mi tell you fi pick me for the foreman. Why you never pick me for the foreman?'” the woman recalled.

She told the court that Caine was visibly angry and said she informed Caine that she had been doing jury duty for years and that the foreman didn’t get more money than the other jurors so she didn’t know what he was fussing about.

She said Caine left the jury room after this.

At another point, the juror testified, Cain came to her early in the trial to say that the accused men were promising entertainers and that they should be given a chance.

She said she told him that she had five boys and she wouldn’t like whatever happened to the deceased man to happen to any of them.

She said he again told her that the men were “promising boys” and that they could do good.

But during cross-examination she was taken to task by Neita-Robertson over the fact that she did not put these things in her evidence.

The case continues on Friday.