Vybz Kartel’s murder conviction has been overturned. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, Jamaica’s final court of appeal, ruled on Thursday, March 14, 2024, that the 2014 convictions of Adidja Palmer, Shawn “Shawn Storm” Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John for the murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams must be quashed, and sent the question of whether they should face a retrial back to Jamaica’s Court of Appeal, according to the judgment in Campbell and others v The King [2024] UKPC 6.

The ruling came exactly ten years after the verdict. On March 13, 2014, after a 64-day trial in the Home Circuit Court, a jury convicted the four men by a 10–1 majority; a fifth defendant, Shane Williams, was acquitted. On April 3 that year they were sentenced to life with hard labour, with minimum terms before parole of 35 years for Palmer, 30 for St John and 25 for Campbell and Jones. Kartel’s minimum was later cut to 32 and a half years on appeal, the Guardian notes.

Juror X

The case turned on what happened in the final hours of the trial. Before the jury retired, the judge learned of an allegation that one juror — “Juror X” — had offered fellow jurors J$500,000 to return a particular verdict. The trial continued with that juror still on the panel; under Section 31 of the Jury Act, a murder trial could not proceed with fewer than eleven jurors, and one juror had already been discharged in February.

“In the Board’s view, allowing Juror X to continue to serve on the jury is fatal to the safety of the convictions which followed,” Lord Lloyd-Jones wrote for a panel that also included Lord Reed, Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lady Simler. “This was an infringement of the defendants’ fundamental right to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court in accordance with section 16 of Chapter III of the Jamaican Constitution.” The judge, the Board said, “should … have done more to investigate what had occurred. He needed to establish as best he could how wide the contamination had spread and over what period.” Having decided the appeal on juror misconduct, the Board did not rule on the defence’s other grounds, including the admissibility of the telephone evidence, the BBC reports.

The prosecution’s case was that Williams had been entrusted with two of Kartel’s unlicensed firearms and failed to return them, was summoned to Palmer’s house on Swallowfield Avenue, Havendale, on August 16, 2011, and was beaten to death there; the house was later found gutted by fire and no body was ever recovered. The four were arrested on September 30, 2011, and have maintained their innocence throughout.

‘Today he is an innocent man’

Kartel, 48, remains in custody for now. Section 14(2) of the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) Act allows the Court of Appeal to order a retrial where a quashed conviction makes that in the interests of justice, the Jamaica Observer explains. “Yesterday Mr. Palmer was a convicted felon, today he is an innocent man,” his attorney Isat Buchanan said. Bert Samuels, who represents Campbell, told the Gleaner the men “are no longer convicts,” adding that Campbell “now has the right to apply for bail because he is now awaiting the decision of a court whether he should go to trial or not.” His colleague Bianca Samuels cautioned: “The Privy Council is not saying that there must be a retrial … We are grateful that the conviction has been quashed but we have a challenge ahead.”

Bert Samuels, whose team filed 9,000 pages to London, said the win had not changed his view that Jamaica should leave the Privy Council for the Caribbean Court of Justice. “How could it ever change my mind? I want a native court, I want black people to try my case,” he told the Observer. “The Court of Appeal has brilliant judges, but this time they got it wrong.”

Kartel was dancehall’s dominant figure at the time of his arrest and has continued to release music from prison. What happens next — retrial, bail or release — now rests with the Court of Appeal in Kingston.

Listen and dig deeper

Sources: Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — Shawn Campbell and 3 others v The King (No 2) (Jamaica), [2024] UKPC 6 (judgment given Mar 14, 2024); BBC Newsbeat — “Vybz Kartel: Jamaica dancehall star’s murder conviction overturned” (Mar 14, 2024); The Guardian — “Jamaican musician Vybz Kartel has murder conviction quashed” (Mar 14, 2024); Jamaica Observer — “Conviction Quashed: Privy Council sends Kartel case back to local Appeal Court” (Mar 14, 2024); Jamaica Observer — “‘CCJ straight’: Despite ruling in his favour, Bert Samuels still wants Jamaica to ditch Privy Council” (Mar 14, 2024); Jamaica Gleaner — “Kartel and company no longer convicts” (Yasmine Peru, Mar 15, 2024); FOX 5 NY — “Vybz Kartel case: Court overturns conviction” (Mar 14, 2024).

Editor’s note: This story is part of an archive backfill covering Jamaican music news from 2022 to 2026. It is dated to the events it reports.