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A high-stakes criminal trial involving 25 alleged members of the Tesha Miller-affiliated Klansman Gang saw intensifying legal battles on Wednesday, as defense teams doubled down on efforts to block prosecutors from entering a key witness statement from a deceased woman into official court evidence. The core of the defense’s challenge centers on serious unresolved questions surrounding the woman’s formal identity.

Prosecutors (referred to as the Crown in this jurisdiction) have been calling a sequence of witnesses to meet the legal criteria laid out in Section 31(D) of the country’s Evidence Act. This provision allows out-of-court statements to be admitted as evidence when a witness is unable to testify in person, a rule that applies in cases of death, severe illness, the witness being outside the court’s jurisdiction, or failure to locate the witness after exhaustive reasonable searches. The statement in question relates specifically to the 15th and 16th charges laid out in the grand indictment.

The would-be witness, identified as Shanice Roberts, passed away in February 2021. Before her death, she provided a formal statement to law enforcement investigators about the February 7, 2020 murder of Noah Smith, which occurred at Yarico Place in St. Andrew. Four of the accused — Michael Wildman, Jerome Spike, Nashuan Guest, and Geovaughni McDonald — are standing trial on charges that they knowingly facilitated the robbery and killing that resulted in Smith’s death.

Wednesday’s proceedings focused heavily on cross-examination of the detective constable who recorded Roberts’ statement on the night of the 2020 murder. Denise Hinson, the defense attorney representing Nashuan Guest, subjected the officer’s testimony to searching scrutiny. Hinson argued that the photographic exhibit entered into the record, which the detective identified on Monday as depicting the woman he interviewed the night of the killing, is actually not a photo of Roberts. The detective had previously told the Crown during his direct examination that he could recognize Roberts from her distinctive facial features, specifically noting she had a very small nose. The defense has pushed back hard, contending that the submitted photograph is too blurry for the officer to even make out the shape of her nose, undermining his identification.

Hinson’s attempt to prove that the spelling of the woman’s name recorded by the detective did not match the spelling on official court records was unsuccessful. In response, prosecutors argued that variations in spelling were ultimately irrelevant to the case, emphasizing that the Crown only needs to prove the deceased witness and the person in the photograph are the same individual, regardless of minor name spelling discrepancies.

Presiding Justice Dale Palmer ruled on the dispute, noting that recalling the witness solely to address a minor spelling discrepancy does nothing to resolve the core question of whether the person in the photo is actually Shanice Roberts. “It might not take us anywhere,” Palmer observed, later adding: “How does the spelling assist us in one way or the other even if it was a clear image?”

With the judge indicating he would not allow a witness to be recalled to address Hinson’s spelling challenge, prosecutors announced they will outline next steps for their Section 31(D) application when the court reconvenes next Monday. Hinson and fellow defense attorney Sasha-Kay Shaw, who have both formally objected to admitting the statement, are scheduled to submit written legal arguments on the matter in the coming days.

In a separate procedural ruling on Wednesday, the Crown secured judicial approval to amend the third and fourth counts of the indictment, despite fierce pushback from the defense team. The amendment corrects an incorrect date listed for the offense in question. Defense attorneys argued that the amendment would prejudice their clients — Tesha Miller, Rolando Jermaine Hall and Michael Wildman — who are named in these counts.

Justice Palmer, however, rejected the defense’s objections. He noted that there had been no disagreement over the actual date of the offense during cross-examination of the only witness called so far for these counts. Furthermore, Palmer ruled that the amendment request was filed sufficiently early in the trial proceedings, and that defense teams already have more than enough time to adjust their strategies in response. The judge concluded there was no material prejudice to the accused as a result of the change.

Following the ruling, all defendants formally entered a plea of “not guilty” when asked to respond to the amended counts. The trial is scheduled to resume later on Thursday, with additional procedural and substantive arguments expected to move the high-profile case forward.

In the wake of Hurricane Melissa’s catastrophic October 2023 landfall, which caused $12.2 billion in damage and erased 56% of Jamaica’s gross domestic product, the Jamaican government established the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) to lead the country’s recovery and rebuilding effort. But a leading transparency and accountability advocate is sounding the alarm over gaps in the NaRRA legislation, warning that the same government overreach that was recently struck down by the country’s Constitutional Court could become legally enshrined if reforms are not made.

Jeanette Calder, executive director of the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP), laid out these concerns during a virtual address to the Kiwanis Club of Kingston on Tuesday, in a presentation titled *Trust, Power & Public Funds: Understanding the NaRRA Bill*. Calder anchored her warning in a landmark Constitutional Court ruling handed down in late April, which invalidated a 2020 environmental permit granted to Bengal Development Limited for a large-scale mining project in the ecologically fragile Dry Harbour Mountains of St Ann. The court found the permit unconstitutional after the Jamaican government overrode formal objections from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and local communities, both of which warned the project would cause irreversible harm to the sensitive ecosystem.

Calder pushed back against common claims that the NaRRA Bill is crafted to let the government outright bypass independent regulatory agencies entirely. Instead, she clarified, the legislation lets NaRRA control those bodies through a controversial “stepping order” mechanism. Under the bill’s terms, when a regulatory body like NEPA is asked to approve a reconstruction or infrastructure project, NaRRA’s appointed chief executive officer can set a mandatory deadline for the agency to issue a decision. If the agency fails to meet that deadline, or if the CEO simply disagrees with the agency’s technical or planning assessment, the stepping order allows NaRRA to override the regulator’s ruling entirely and issue the approval itself. Critically, the legislation includes no requirement to publicly disclose when NaRRA has chosen to disregard independent technical advice from regulators.

Beyond the lack of transparency around overridden regulatory decisions, Calder identified two additional major accountability gaps in the bill: there is no explicit legal right for affected local communities to weigh in on projects that impact them, and the legislation does not codify a clear right to judicial review for contested NaRRA decisions. For Calder, this framework directly echoes the overreach the Constitutional Court condemned in the Dry Harbour Mountain case, risking embedding that same undemocratic practice into national law.

Calder also drew attention to Section 26 of the NaRRA Bill, which exempts the new authority from the 2019 Public Investment Management System (PIMS) — a regulatory framework designed to guarantee value for public money on large-scale infrastructure projects by requiring a full pre-funding appraisal before any public funds are committed. This exemption is particularly concerning, she argued, because NaRRA’s mandate extends beyond hurricane recovery projects to include a portfolio of broad “national strategic projects” unrelated to post-storm rebuilding. While Calder acknowledged that proponents argue PIMS can slow project delivery, she stressed that the exemption creates a critical accountability risk that could open the door to wasteful spending of public resources.

Perhaps the most pressing concern raised by Calder centers on governance oversight for NaRRA, which will manage a public budget totaling $6.7 billion USD, equal to roughly 1 trillion Jamaican dollars, at a time when public trust in government institutions is already low. Jamaica’s own 2012 Corporate Governance Framework requires independent governing boards for public entities to strengthen transparency, probity and decision-making effectiveness. Yet the NaRRA Bill does not include a formal governing board. Instead, the authority will be led by a single CEO appointed directly by the prime minister, supported by an advisory committee appointed by the relevant government minister.

Calder emphasized that the advisory committee holds no actual legal authority: it cannot block or reverse any decision made by the CEO, the legislation does not require the committee to hold formal meetings, and ignoring the committee’s advice carries no legal consequences. Calder acknowledged that rapid reconstruction is a critical national priority after Hurricane Melissa’s devastation, but she argued that speed should never come at the cost of accountability for public funds and democratic decision-making. She called on the government to integrate robust transparency and accountability mechanisms into the final NaRRA legislation to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the Dry Harbour Mountain constitutional conflict.

Veteran Jamaican attorney Howard Mitchell, who leads a government-appointed review committee probing governance irregularities at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), has sounded the alarm over a deeply entrenched culture of insufficient accountability and lax oversight that permeates nearly the entire public sector. Far from being an isolated issue at the prominent teaching hospital, Mitchell argues that the gaps uncovered during the UHWI investigation are symptomatic of broad, structural flaws that have undermined the performance and integrity of state institutions across the island.

Mitchell outlined three core drivers that allow governance failures to persist across the country’s 156 public bodies: widespread non-compliance with existing regulatory requirements, toothless monitoring mechanisms, and inadequate enforcement of established rules. To illustrate the scope of the compliance crisis, he noted that only 12 of the 156 public bodies are fully up to date on the mandatory financial and operational reports required under the Public Bodies Management and Accountability Act (PBMA). Shockingly, at least one public body has failed to submit a single required report in the 50 years since it was founded, leaving public funds unaccounted for and raising urgent questions about fiscal transparency. This lack of transparency is particularly striking, Mitchell emphasized, given Jamaica’s widely celebrated recent successes in macroeconomic management.

The review committee was convened specifically to examine procurement and governance shortcomings at UHWI, following a 2025 report from Jamaica’s Auditor General that flagged major irregularities at the facility. But Mitchell said the investigation quickly revealed that the same weaknesses extend across the entire public administration system. A primary contributing factor, he explained, is that the agencies tasked with overseeing public bodies are themselves starved of the resources, staffing, and training needed to do their jobs effectively. The Auditor General’s Department, for example, faces such significant budget constraints that it can only conduct superficial, one-off checks rather than sustained follow-up oversight. Compliance units within the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service also lack sufficient funding and capacity to drive the cultural shift needed to embed accountability across all public institutions.

Compounding the challenge is the unwieldy structure of Jamaica’s public sector, which places an unmanageable number of agencies under the supervision of individual ministries. Mitchell noted that some cabinet departments are responsible for monitoring more than two dozen public bodies, while 39 separate agencies report directly to the prime minister – a workload that makes consistent, effective oversight functionally impossible.

Over time, these persistent systemic failures have created a dangerous trust deficit that erodes public confidence in national institutions, Mitchell warned. When public bodies fail to deliver on their mandated services, the backlash falls directly on political leaders and state institutions, damaging social cohesion and undermining the legitimacy of governance. He added that political stakeholders have begun to recognize that this gap between public promises and actual service delivery is a core root of declining citizen trust.

Against this backdrop, the UHWI reform process has emerged as a critical test case for broader public sector overhaul. The review committee has concluded that Jamaica lacks the specialized local expertise to manage the complex transformation of a large teaching hospital, and is therefore recommending that the government hire an independent international change management expert to lead UHWI’s restructuring, develop a formal implementation roadmap, and enforce accountability for outcomes. Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton has endorsed the recommendation, confirming that the government will source the required expertise from the international market, as no local firm possesses the specialized experience in teaching hospital governance and service delivery needed for the project.

Mitchell stressed that the UHWI reform should not be a standalone fix. Instead, he framed the process as a critical wake-up call for Jamaica to address the accountability crisis across all public bodies, using the hospital’s transformation as a benchmark to raise standards across the entire public sector.