Friday, October 1, 2010
Prosecutor asks court to keep Buju locked up
BY PAUL HENRY Observer staff reporter henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
If the US Government has its way, Jamaican Reggae superstar Buju Banton will remain behind bars pending the outcome of his retrial in December on cocaine and gun charges.
If the US Government has its way, Jamaican Reggae superstar Buju Banton will remain behind bars pending the outcome of his retrial in December on cocaine and gun charges.
In documents filed in the Sam M Gibbons Federal Court, James Preston, the Assistant US Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, said that Banton, whose registered name is Mark Myrie, was a flight risk, while urging that a bond motion filed on behalf of the entertainer should be rejected, "without any further hearing".
Defence attorney David Oscar Markus had on Tuesday filed the motion for bond, a day after Banton's cocaine and gun-possession trial was declared a mistrial because a 12-member panel of jurors was unable to reach a verdict at the end of three days of deliberation.
Among other things, Markus stated in the document that Banton was not a flight risk because of his fame, and that he was only denied bail before his trial that started on Monday, September 20 due to the revocation of his entertainment visa upon his arrest.
Markus stated in his filing that if the federal court were mindful to grant Banton bail, he would also seek bond in the immigration court to prevent his client's deportation so he could face his retrial.
The bail hearing is tentatively set for October 6, at which time a date for the retrial will be agreed.
But in his written objection, Preston charged that Markus failed to give legal support as to why his client should be released pre-trial, and noted that with this second motion for bond, Banton "wholly ignores the previous court order for his detention".
"The motion should therefore be denied," the prosecutor stated in the document.
Preston also rebutted the assumption by Markus that the Jamaican entertainer is not a flight risk because of his notoriety.
He added that Markus, in his motion, had failed to point out that the court had previously found that there were aggravating factors, based on the evidence, for Banton's detention outside of his immigration woes.
"The defendant has presented nothing new, other than a hung jury, for the court's consideration," Preston wrote, while adding, "The defendant again fails to rebut the presumption that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure that the defendant is not a risk of flight."
Banton has been in jail since his arrest last December 10 when he was charged, along with friend Ian Thomas and James Mack, for conspiracy to possess and distribute 5 kilogrammes of cocaine and possession of a firearm during the furtherance of a crime.
Both Thomas and Mack, who were arrested hours before Banton at a warehouse buying the drugs from an undercover agent, have since pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in November.
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Monday, September 27, 2010
Bounty Killer Gets Bail
Deejay to return to court November 9
BY TANESHA MUNDLE Observer staff reporter mundlet@jamaicaobserver.com
Deejay Bounty Killer was this morning granted bail when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's court.
BY TANESHA MUNDLE Observer staff reporter mundlet@jamaicaobserver.com
Deejay Bounty Killer was this morning granted bail when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's court.
Bounty Killer, whose real name is Rodney Pryce, was granted $500,000 bail and was ordered to return to court on November 9.
He is charged for the assault and unlawful wounding of Racquel Smith. Smith turned up at the Constant Spring Police station two weeks ago and complained that he beat her with a hammer, a mosquito repellant and a chain. Police reported that she was badly bruised and bloodied when she lodged the complaint.
This morning Smith indicated through her lawyer Terrence Ballentine, to the court that she wanted the matter to be sent to mediation.
Ballentine said his client and Pryce had been together for three years and he had never hit her until the incident earlier this month. He said Smith wanted to continue her relationship with the Deejay.
However, Senior Magistrate Judith Pusey would have none of it and dismissed the request.
Pryce also had another matter in which he is charged for possession of ganja put off until November 8.
Jurors Evenly Split on Buju's Fate
Judge rejects lawyer's motion for mistrial
A jury foreman minutes ago told United States judge Jim Moody that they have not been able to reach a verdict in the drug case involving Jamaican Reggae star Buju Banton.
The foreman said the 12-member jury was split evenly.
"I don't know if we will get to a final decision. We don't feel that we will progress, so could you provide further instructions? Since Thursday we have been reviewing evidence, nobody has changed their minds from their original positions," the jury foreman told the court.
Moody then instructed the jurors to take their time in coming to a final decision.
"Be as leisurely as the occasion may require," Moody said.
The judge gave further instructions that none of the jurors should surrender their conscience decision.
Banton's attorney David Markus then filed a motion for a mistrial but Moody rejected the motion.
Banton appeared in court in a white shirt and a cream coloured pants today. His feet were shackled.
The long wait for a verdict has not been going down well with the artiste's supporters who all appeared nervous.
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Judge Orders Jury to Deliberate in Reggae Singer Buju Banton's Drug Trial
TAMPA, Fla. — A judge ordered a Tampa jury to continue deliberating on whether Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton conspired to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer last year.
The 12-person jury sent U.S. District Judge James Moody a note Monday saying they hadn't reached a verdict because none of them had changed their minds since Thursday, when deliberations began after a four-day trial. Moody had released them for the weekend on Friday.
Banton's attorney asked for a mistrial, which Moody denied.
Banton is charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and aiding two others in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution. He faces up to life in prison.
Banton's attorney maintains that a U.S. government informant entrapped him.
The 12-person jury sent U.S. District Judge James Moody a note Monday saying they hadn't reached a verdict because none of them had changed their minds since Thursday, when deliberations began after a four-day trial. Moody had released them for the weekend on Friday.
Banton's attorney asked for a mistrial, which Moody denied.
Banton is charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and aiding two others in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution. He faces up to life in prison.
Banton's attorney maintains that a U.S. government informant entrapped him.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Old Mon and the Sea
Jamaica has been on the defensive lately. jamaica . . . no problem T-shirts sold in sticky tourist flytraps seemed like so much wishful thinking in June, when a popular mafioso went on the lam and riots shocked the slums of Kingston. It would be a while before the memory of daily body counts receded into a haze of happy ganja smoke.
Chris Blackwell, the big daddy cool of the Island Outpost group — a consortium of glitzster hotels including the Caves, Jakes, Strawberry Hill, Geejam and Ian Fleming’s beach retreat, GoldenEye — remembers the country’s postwar better self, when high tide used to bring Hollywood and royals of every flag. “The first person I ever saw water-ski was Errol Flynn,” says Blackwell, who grew up in Jamaica. Flynn was dressed for cocktails. He had a cigarette holder in his fist “and a dachshund under his arm. I was 12 or 13, and it was the most glamorous thing I’d ever seen.”
That was then. Now Jamaica, with its lush Jurassic terrain and hypnotic music, its fountainhead of rum and distinct cuisine, competes for heat with St. Bart’s, Mustique and even Anguilla, a scrubby cultural wasteland in Blackwell’s view. “Anguilla is just a strip of sand,” he says dismissively. “But a lot of people who have money prefer a place that has no natives. No problems. All they want is a great beach.” Though Blackwell himself is now a very rich man, he is careful to avoid any implication that he has become the Mon. The founder of Island Records, he phenomenized Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, Steve Winwood, the B-52s and Roxy Music; signed U2 to its first record contract; and then, in 1989, sold his label to PolyGram for something like $300 million.
Then came a ’90s layover in South Beach, when Miami was practically giving away Deco bijoux, and Blackwell, who couldn’t resist a bargain, scooped up the Marlin and the Tides. But now he’s home, and Jamaica is his next act, only Jamaica is suddenly behaving like some strung-out rock star. A State Department travel warning was briefly issued just as the impresario was getting ready to take me on a tour of his Jamaica, the last stop the gutted-and-overhauled GoldenEye, scheduled to open in mid-November.
The Caves sits high on a cliff in Negril, past the honeymooner hideaways and the storied emerald golfscapes of Montego Bay. Blackwell, who despises golf, has made a conscious decision to leave the country-clubbers to MoBay, as natives call it, where his cousins, the Pringles, famously opened Round Hill in 1953. Blackwell’s Island Outpost almost seems to make a point of tastefully exploiting the other rich and varied neighborhoods of the island.
The Old Harrovian accent notwithstanding, Blackwell grew up in Jamaica, where his mother’s clan, the Lindos, is one of the island’s first families. At the hotel bar, he shows off Blackwell’s Black Gold Special Reserve Fine Jamaican Rum, with its Gothic-scripted treasure-map label. “Settling in Jamaica in 1625,” it says of the Lindos, “they were renowned for exporting bananas, coconuts and rum.” (Equally: the importing of slaves from Africa.)
“On a choppy day, it’s like a washing machine in here,” says Blackwell, 73 but markedly fit, swimming his grotto like some grizzled Neptune. Blackwell fishtails through an underwater tunnel to reach a second, larger cave. I follow and emerge bleeding like shark chum. “Fetch the white rum!” he shouts — 150 proof. Locals slap their faces with it like Aqua Velva before downing a shot. Blackwell dabs it on the back-of-leg scratches, and it burns more than the original offense. But it could be worse: On a recent night swim here with Vladimir Doronin, the Russian-oligarch boyfriend of Naomi Campbell, sea urchins stung Blackwell on both hands. The remedy for that, he reliably informs me, is urine. The Caves is sand-free, and so in the next few months, Blackwell plans to revamp the resort, its Caribbean cottages giving way to Santorini-bleached rooftops.
After a breakfast of johnnycakes and eggs with callaloo, it’s into the jeep for a trek down south. Blackwell used to know the roads like a telephone lineman, but that was ages ago, and the signs are spotty. Blackwell, a widower of five years, turns out to be an indefatigable roadside shopper, on the hunt for lignum vitae cutting boards, artisanal goat cheese, Bombay mangoes. The jeep slows at a fly-clouded shack where Blackwell consumes fried snapper and a Red Stripe as anonymously as any bus driver.
The houses turn more fastidious as we enter St. Elizabeth Parish, where the villas of Jakes bestride Treasure Beach. The rooms are a fashion stylist’s dream: door frames made of driftwood, walls in the outdoor showers built with Perrier-Jouët empties, a birdbath recycled as a sink. The zinc-roofed cottages were designed by Sally Henzell, an unreconstructed hippie who once dated Blackwell before marrying Perry Henzell, the director of “The Harder They Come.”
Her son Jason, who quit banking to oversee Jakes, commandeers the skiff Mr. Nice Guy for a voyage to the Pelican Bar, a flimsy offshore rig that has somehow survived his 40th-birthday blowout and a hurricane. Jason points to the property down the shore that Lily Allen was going to buy — then didn’t. “That’s when her accountant said, ‘What do you want to go and buy land in Jamaica for?’ ” Blackwell jokes. (But, he adds politely, “She’s a terrific girl.”)
The boat slows before two giant hawksbill turtles in flagrante delicto, a rare sight and virtually impossible to capture with Blackwell’s Nokia phone. “Okay, we’ve interrupted enough of this love affair,” Blackwell announces, and the skiff skips onward.
Back in the jeep, we reach Kingston after Blackwell begs directions from a police car and is dragooned into taking on a hitchhiker, a friendly mama juggling plastic-wrapped plates of food. She turns out to be a cop, too. “So now that I have a cop in the car, I can break the speed limit?” Blackwell asks. She gives him a breadfruit recipe before hopping out.
We make a left into Trench Town: broken asphalt, corrugated roofs and car tires repurposed as planters. Bob Marley was raised here. “I released his first record,” says Blackwell, who misread the name on the tape box as Robert Morley. “Same as the foppish English actor. That record’s worth thousands of dollars now. ‘Robert Morley’ singing ‘One Cup of Coffee’ on one side and ‘Judge Not’ on the other. It’s like a mistake on a stamp.”
When Marley was shot, he recuperated at Strawberry Hill, Blackwell’s home high above Kingston in the Blue Mountains, where the coffee comes from. Blackwell’s gingerbread house with shutters is duplicated on a smaller scale on the estate’s 50 acres for guests who dig cottages with treehouse views and the colonial romance of four-poster beds canopied with mosquito nets. “Bob and I were a match made in heaven,” Blackwell says. “He’d met someone who is Jamaican, who understood the language, understood him, what he was. And didn’t reject it. I gave him money without any contract to make a record because with these rebel characters, the only way to establish a relationship with them is to show them trust.”
In Kingston proper, Marley’s house turns out to be a Victorian gingerbread, too. Blackwell lived here first, orchestrating a hand-over, one intuits, to tweak the neighbors, who appear to have responded by selling out to car dealerships in this formerly upmarket neighborhood. “Rich people don’t care at all for the classes that don’t have any money, they really don’t,” says Blackwell, who deems Marley “blessed with a real innate wisdom.” Blackwell remembers when Rastas were treated like vermin, underappreciated as fakirs who rove the land and are today so closely identified with the Jamaica brand. They remind him more than a bit of the Jews.
On the coast, in Port Antonio, No Doubt and Drake are expected in coming months at Geejam’s in situ recording studio. Tom Cruise and his family rented all five villas when he shot “Knight and Day” in town. The Aga Khan is dearly departed from his Port Antonio beach house and private island, but Thyssens still reside at Alligator Head, and the cattle is still branded ef for Errol Flynn at Flynn’s estate, Boston, a 15-minute drive from Geejam, where his widow, Patrice, endures.
Blackwell’s partner Jon Baker is a punk pirate: diamond hoop earrings, chipped tooth and oik accent. His act under management is the Jolly Boys, a bouncy calypso band of elderlies singing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” down at the Bushbar restaurant.
Blackwell confers with Baker about installing Apple TVs at other Island Outpost hotels: keep the guests pleasantly distracted if it rains. The discussion inevitably runs aground on St. Bart’s. “If they want to make Jamaica happening, they’ll have to loosen restrictions,” says Blackwell, who’d like to see marijuana declassified as a drug here.
“Marijuana is Jamaica’s big brand,” Baker says.
“This place would really take off,” Blackwell continues. “But parents hear the word ‘drugs’ and don’t want their kids near that. Marijuana is a plant. It’s an herb. It’s ridiculous.”
Blackwell handles the jet ski like a Harley as we buzz the beaches and mangrove-shadowed lagoons of his ambitious 52-acre GoldenEye compound. There’s talk that the airstrip nearby, which is being upgraded to accommodate international flights, will be renamed the Ian Fleming Airport. Fleming’s red bulletwood desk, where he fired off 14 spy novels, shall return. (The original skin-and-bones villa that Blackwell acquired in 1977 has been refreshed and expanded as part of the overhaul.) Fleming’s gardener Ramsey Dacosta remains, cutting coconuts for guests. Summer-camp-style docks have been grafted to each of the private villas. Blackwell jokes that one super-property is “the Russian lot.”
Fleming was merely a journalist and former intelligence officer who had only just started fooling about with a novel on his typewriter when he started up at GoldenEye. Blackwell’s darkly ravishing mother, Blanche, eventually became Commander Fleming’s mistress. She sublet GoldenEye and redecorated it, much to the irritation of Fleming’s wife, Ann, who disparaged Blanche to friends as Ian’s “Jamaican wife.” It’s the only subject Blackwell trips over later in the car, probably because his mother is still alive. He describes her back then as “sort of like a man in a way, ready to try anything and go anywhere.” Blanche was a fixture at Firefly, Noël Coward’s house just up the hill and open to the public. This is where, at age 14, Blackwell learned how to be at ease with superstars like Charlie Chaplin, Liz Taylor and Audrey Hepburn funning around the swimming pool with the heart-stopping view.
The jeep pulls into the Montego Bay airport. The end of the road. We’ve been listening to the band 1 Giant Leap in the car. “It’s all about finding things that will attract people,” Blackwell says. “Like a video does for a record.” May Jamaica be a hit for Chris Blackwell.
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Protoje unplugged for Manifesto Toronto
Protoje Exclusive Performance from themanifesto.ca on Vimeo.
Watch this video of Protoje and his Indiggnation band’s lead guitarist, Jason Worton, doing an acoustic version of the song »JA« exclusively for Manifesto. Shot in the hills of Kingston, Jamaica.
Friday, September 24, 2010
No Verdict Yet
Jury breaks deliberations for lunch
BY PAUL HENRY Observer staff reporter henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
The jury has broken their deliberations for lunch and the courtroom closed in the trial of Reggae singer Buju Banton. The jury will return for their deliberations at 1:00 pm or 12:00 pm Jamaican time.
BY PAUL HENRY Observer staff reporter henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
The jury has broken their deliberations for lunch and the courtroom closed in the trial of Reggae singer Buju Banton. The jury will return for their deliberations at 1:00 pm or 12:00 pm Jamaican time.
On the 5th floor of the Gibbons US Court here in Tampa, Buju Banton's supporters prayed and held hands, while his longterm friend and fellow entertainer Wayne Wonder broke out singing the embattled artiste's popular hits of the nineties including 'Serious' and 'The Stone Love Anthem'.
"The tension is too thick," a supporter told the Observer.
Buju is being held in a holding area until the verdict is read.
If convicted, the artiste, real name Mark Myrie, could be sentenced to life imprisonment or slapped with millions of dollars in fines for the charges of conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and illegal possession of a firearm in the furtherance of a crime.
He was arrested at his Tamarac, Florida home on December 10 last year, following the arrest of former co-accused Ian Thomas and James Mack, who had been in possession of the firearm for which Banton was jointly charged.
Thomas and Mack have since pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in November.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Jamaicans Anxiously Await Buju Verdict
Unsure whether artiste will be exonerated American jury
From: BY KIMMO MATTHEWS Observer staff reporter matthewsk@jamaicaobserver.com
Thursday, September 23, 2010
HOURS before a 13 member panel of jurors is expected to deliver a verdict in the case involving Reggae artiste Mark Mryie in Tampa Florida anxious Jamaicans are awaiting the results and expressing mixed views about the pending results.
"Him going to prison," one man, a bus operator identifying himself as 'Mark', told the Observer a few minutes ago.
He was one of several persons who the Observer is now interviewing on the streets about the case.
A 13-member panel of jurors in Tampa, Florida is now deliberating whether to find Reggae artiste Buju Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, guilty or innocent of conspiracy with intent to distribute five kilogrammes of cocaine.
Another man who identified himself as 'Shawn' said he strongly felt he would be set free.
Meanwhile, William Edwards who was at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston this afternoon said he really wanted Buju to be free but said based on the evidence it appeared he would be sentenced.
"I would love for him to be freed but based on the evidence it looks unlikely but I will be watching with my fingers crossed," said Edwards.
A female security guard at the hotel who seemed unsure, said she was praying for Myrie.
"All we can do his hope and pray," said the guard.
Another taxi operator along Waterloo Road said he hoped he was exonerated.
Myrie has maintained his innocence and says he was entrapped by government informant Alexander Johnson, a Colombian who has served three years for a drug offence. Banton told the court he was talking 'straight up crap' when he engaged in conversation with Johnson about drugs on a plane during an eight-hour flight from Madrid, Spain to Miami, Florida last year.
The artiste, along with James Mack and Ian Thomas, was arrested in December last year after Thomas and Mack were nabbed during an undercover drug sting at a warehouse in Sarasota, Tampa. If convicted Myrie faces a sentence of 20 years to life and a fine of up to US$4 million.
Florida jury deliberates in Buju Banton drug trial
Associated Press
Published: Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 11:36 a.m. MDT
Published: Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 11:36 a.m. MDT
TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida jury is deciding whether Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton conspired to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer last year.
Banton is charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and aiding two others in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution. He faces up to life in prison.
The singer testified that he talked a lot about cocaine with a U.S. government informant, but he was only trying to impress the man, who claimed to have music industry connections.
In closing arguments Thursday, Banton's attorney said the informant only managed to connect two co-defendants to the conspiracy.
Those men pleaded guilty. Neither testified in the trial that began Monday in Tampa federal court.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Buju says he’s nervous, scared
Stephen Marley says artiste is no drug dealer
By PAUL HENRY, Observer staff reporter, henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
By PAUL HENRY, Observer staff reporter, henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
Reggae star Buju Banton denied being a drug dealer when he took the stand during his drug trial in the Gibbons US Court here this afternoon.
Banton said he was “talking crap” during the conversation with Alexander Johnson, the prosecution's main witness, on a flight they shared from Madrid to Miami. He said the incident has caused him and his family indescribable pain.
Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, was called to the stand about 2:45 pm Florida time by his attorney David Oscar Markus.
“I was just talking crap. I’m not a drug dealer,” Banton admitted.
He said that he did not want to be outtalked by Johnson, and said Johnson seemed to be a nice person who he liked hanging out with.
Banton admitted also that he had made a false move by sampling cocaine in a warehouse in Tampa. He said he was unaware that he was going to see cocaine as Johnson told him that he was going to inspect a boat.
He said he was fascinated with boats and was very surprised when he saw cocaine.
Banton apologised profusely and when asked by his attorney how he felt, the artiste said, “I am nervous and scared and I have been waiting for 10 months…” before he was interrupted by lead prosecutor Jim Preston who objected to the line of questioning.
Presiding judge Jim Moody sustained the objection.
Under cross examination, Preston, who asked Banton if he had thanked Johnson for making him [Buju] himself again, Banton said, “I would not risk my career which I have been working to build for 20 years for five kilos of cocaine.”
Banton said he was thanking Johnson who he thought could hook him up with a record deal and not a cocaine deal, as his record deal with his former company Tommy Boy Records had expired in 2009.
Meanwhile, Stephen Marley, son of Reggae king Bob Marley, also testified on Banton’s behalf, saying he has known him for over 10 years and never knew him to be a drug dealer.
Banton was arrested at his home at Tamarac, South Florida hours after his former co-accused Ian Thomas and James Mack, were arrested during an alleged drug bust in an undercover operation at a warehouse in Sarasota, Florida in December last year.
All three were charged with conspiracy to possess more than five kilogrammes of cocaine with intent to distribute, while Mack was charged with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offence.
The drug charge carries a minimum sentence of 20 years to life in addition to a fine of up to US$4 million, while the firearm charge carries a sentence of five years to life and a fine of up to US$250,000.
Both Mack and Thomas, in their plea deals, have agreed to give evidence to assist the US Government in building a case against Banton, in exchange for lesser sentences.
The trial continues tomorrow.
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Prosecution plays video tape showing artiste tasting cocaine
BY PAUL HENRY Observer reporter henryp@jamaicaobserver.com
Alexander Johnson, the United States informant assisting prosecutors to seal a conviction against Reggae artiste, this afternoon testified that Buju Banton never entered into any drug deal with him.
Johnson, a Colombian national who had served three years for a drug offense, made the revelation under cross-examination from Banton's attorney David Markus.
He said Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, never sold or bought drugs and had never wired any money to him to invest in the illicit trade.
Johnson also admitted that Banton had never purchased any cocaine in Panama or Colombia and that their dealings never went beyond talk.
The informant did not readily answer when Markus asked if Myrie had stopped taking his calls in December last year.
"Didn't Ian Thomas tell you that he (Myrie) does not want to do anything man? Talk to me. He said that's not him, he is about music, he eats and sleeps the music?" Markus asked to which Johnson replied yes.
Johnson also told the court that he had no knowledge that Myrie had financed the deal that went sour in the police controlled warehouse in Saratoga, Florida when Myrie's co-defendants, Ian Thomas and James Mack were arrested attempting to purchase cocaine from Drug Enforcement agents.
Earlier the prosecution played a video recording of Myrie tasting the contraband in December last year. The footage showed the artiste, Thomas and an undercover cop at a location in Sarasota. A kilogramme of the drug was produced by the cop and Thomas used a knife to cut it open and Myrie used his finger to wipe the knife and sampled the cocaine.
Thomas described the drug as 'fish scale' a term Johnson explained to mean high quality. While the footage was being showed some of Banton's fans appeared disappointed while others watched with keen interest.
Johnson also testified that during a meeting Thomas informed him that he had a contact in Georgia with drug connections and that he (Thomas) would be the person who would be doing business.
Markus is expected to continue cross-examining Johnson when the trial resumes tomorrow morning (September 22, 2010).
Tapes at Buju Banton trial in Tampa reveal discussions of drug deals
From: http://www.tampabay.com/news
By Nicole Hutcheson, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Wednesday, September 22, 2010
On a summer day last year, reggae star Buju Banton met up with a man for drinks at a Fort Lauderdale restaurant.
By Nicole Hutcheson, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Wednesday, September 22, 2010
On a summer day last year, reggae star Buju Banton met up with a man for drinks at a Fort Lauderdale restaurant.
After hours of casual conversation, the talk turned to drugs.
"Do you have any contacts where I can get cocaine?" Banton eventually asked.
He didn't know the man he was talking with was an informer, and that part of the conversation was being taped.
The question came back to haunt the four time Grammy-nominated musician Tuesday morning in a federal courtroom in Tampa, where the 37-year-old faces charges of conspiracy to buy and sell 5 kilos of cocaine, and aiding and abetting two others to possess a firearm in the course of cocaine distribution.
Prosecutors presented audio evidence of Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, discussing a wide variety of drug deals over five months, including shipping cocaine from Panama to Europe in crates with frozen seafood.
Alexander Johnson, the government informer, testified he first met Banton in first class on a flight from Madrid in July 2009.
From then on, he said he called Banton several times and met with the star throughout Florida.
The audiotapes and transcripts presented Tuesday included choppy conversations between the men. Drugs are discussed, as are dollar amounts and the best ways to transport, but often incoherently. Alcohol was consumed during most of the encounters.
But prosecutors say what is clear is that Banton wanted to put up money to buy cocaine.
"All I do is finance," Banton told Johnson during the restaurant meeting, transcripts show.
"So you give the money to buy dope?" Johnson asked.
"Yes," said Banton, according to transcripts.
Defense attorney David Markus has argued that while his client talked about drug dealing, he never actually funded any.
"Did Mr. Myrie invest one dollar of money into a drug deal?" Markus asked Johnson during cross examination.
"With me — no," Johnson answered.
During another conversation on Aug. 1 at a South Florida hotel, Banton and Johnson discussed buying kilos of cocaine from Panama and transporting them to Europe in containers filled with frozen seafood.
Johnson told Banton he had a seafood business called Frozen Fish, the transcripts show.
Johnson turned informer in 1996 after being convicted of distributing cocaine and marijuana. He was paid $50,000 in the Banton case, according to testimony.
During a conversation at a Sarasota restaurant on Dec. 8, Banton admitted to Johnson he was having money problems. "My truck is in the shop and I can't get it out," Banton said. "I'm going to concentrate, though; things are going to be straight next year."
It was on that day that Banton brought an associate named Ian Thomas along for lunch with Johnson. Banton described Thomas as a "friend who had contacts to purchase kilos of cocaine," Johnson said in court.
Johnson told Banton he would give him 5 extra kilos of cocaine if Thomas and his associate, a man named James Mack, purchased 20 kilos.
Prosecutors presented video of Johnson, Banton and Thomas entering a warehouse in Sarasota later that day. In it, Thomas cuts a kilo open. Banton approaches, takes the knife, wipes it and tastes his finger.
Another video shows Thomas and Mack being arrested while attempting to purchase cocaine at the warehouse two days later. Banton was arrested later that day at his South Florida home.
"So that 5-kilo deal for Mr. Myrie never happened, did it?" Markus asked Johnson.
"No," Johnson said.
The trial is scheduled to continue today.
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