标签： Jamaica

A Jamaican man has walked free from the Home Circuit Court after a judge cleared him of serious weapons charges, capping a years-long legal process that fell apart when prosecutors failed to produce credible, consistent evidence against him.

Roge Stubbs was found not guilty on two counts — possession of a prohibited weapon and unlawful possession of ammunition — this Wednesday, with co-accused Jahmala Vernon also acquitted in the same ruling. Defense attorney Shannan Clarke, who represented Stubbs, shared her relief at the outcome in an interview with Jamaica Observer Friday morning, emphasizing that her client had always maintained his innocence throughout the entire proceedings.

“I am happy that he’s free. He has maintained his innocence from the inception. I am glad that he can now move on with his life,” Clarke told the outlet.

The case dates back to Christmas Day 2022, when police operating in the Kingston Western division pulled over a car carrying five men just after 2:30 a.m. Prosecutors alleged that one of the vehicle’s occupants tossed a gun out of the car window during the stop, leading to all five men being arrested and charged in connection with the weapon.

By 2023, three of the five co-accused had already been released from the case after the Crown chose not to present any evidence to support charges against them. That left only Stubbs and Vernon to face trial, which got underway on May 6 this year. From the start of the proceedings, the prosecution’s case was plagued by critical gaps that undermined its narrative.

Key witnesses from the Jamaica Constabulary Force were unable to provide consistent, clear testimony on two core details of the allegation: which part of the vehicle the gun was supposedly thrown from, and whether any of the five occupants was actually observed holding the weapon before the stop. Compounding that evidential failure, DNA testing carried out on the recovered firearm returned no matches to any of the accused men. With no solid evidence to connect either Stubbs or Vernon to the weapon, the prosecution’s entire case collapsed, leading the court to enter acquittals for both men.

Vernon was represented in court by King’s Counsel Tom Tavares Finson, a prominent Jamaican defense attorney.

Two men serving life sentences for a deadly 2011 home invasion in Westmoreland, Jamaica, have seen their final attempt to overturn their convictions rejected after the island’s Court of Appeal refused permission to introduce previously undisclosed police evidence that they claimed would prove their innocence.

Carvel Hines and Bruce Lamey were found guilty by a seven-member jury at the Westmoreland Circuit Court in February 2017 on charges of murder and wounding with intent. The crimes dated back to January 27, 2011, when the pair allegedly forced entry into the home of 72-year-old Bernice Clarke and her 67-year-old husband Clement in Clark’s Town. Prosecutors argued the attack was carried out that night shortly after 8 p.m., leaving Bernice dead and Clement wounded by gunfire. He survived only by playing dead after the shooting.

In March 2017, the court handed down dual sentences: 18 years of hard labor for the wounding conviction, and a life term for the murder conviction, with a requirement that each man serve a minimum of 33 years behind bars before becoming eligible for parole. All sentences were ordered to run concurrently. An initial application for leave to appeal was turned down in 2018, and the pair launched a second bid that included a motion to admit the new evidence from the 2011 police station log.

The appeal panel, made up of three senior judges, heard the application across two hearings in December 2023 and May 2024, and issued a final ruling rejecting the motion. In their ruling, the judges issued an unqualified apology to both the convicted men and other parties for the multi-year delay in delivering their decision.

The sole eyewitness to the crime was Clement Clarke, who survived the attack. He told the trial that he heard a loud impact on his front door, went to investigate, and found Hines — a man he already knew — standing inside his hallway, armed with a gun. Clarke grabbed a machete to defend himself, but Hines shot him, forcing him to drop the weapon. As he retreated to his bedroom, Hines continued firing and followed him inside, then shot Bernice Clarke. Lamey, who Clarke also knew by sight, joined Hines in the bedroom and also opened fire on the 72-year-old, according to the eyewitness testimony. Clarke fell on top of his wife and pretended to be dead until the two men left the property, then called police for help. He was treated for his wounds at a local hospital, but Bernice Clarke died from her injuries.

At the original trial, both Hines and Lamey denied any involvement in the attack and claimed they were not present at the scene. Hines argued he was with his partner in St Ann on the night of the murder, while Lamey stated he was a father of three and would never commit such a violent crime.

The fresh evidence the pair sought to introduce was a single line entry from the Bethel Town Police Station diary, written the day after the murder by a detective corporal, that noted the killing was believed to be a reprisal attack. Attorneys for the men argued that the prosecution’s failure to disclose this diary entry before and during the trial violated its legal duty to share potentially exculpatory evidence. They contended the entry undermined the credibility of Clement Clarke’s identification of the two men as the attackers, and would have opened new avenues of investigation for the defense that could have changed the trial’s outcome.

Prosecutors pushed back against these claims, noting that the defense never requested access to the police station diary before or during the 2017 trial, and that the document was available for the defense to obtain if they had sought it out. The Crown also argued that the line about a reprisal motive was purely speculative, not factual, and would not have impacted the jury’s assessment of Clarke’s identification of the defendants.

In their ruling dismissing the application, the appeal judges agreed with the prosecution’s assessment. They noted that the diary entry was not a record of direct sensory observation by the officer, but merely a note of an unsubstantiated belief about the motive, meaning it could not qualify as credible factual evidence. Even if it had been introduced at trial, the panel ruled, the entry would not have changed the jury’s guilty verdict. The court added that the core information from the entry was already brought to the jury’s attention as part of the defense’s original case, so it could not qualify as new material that meets the legal standard for admission on appeal. For these reasons, the application to admit the fresh evidence was refused.

VATICAN CITY, ROME — Amid already heightened tensions sparked by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s public rebuke of Pope Leo XIV’s anti-war stance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that his closed-door discussions with the pontiff yielded a constructive, productive exchange. Speaking to assembled reporters on the grounds of the Vatican immediately after the hour-long meeting, Rubio characterized the encounter as a “very good meeting” that laid clear ground for mutual understanding between the U.S. government and the Holy See.

A heated exchange during Friday’s Senate debate on Jamaica’s landmark National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) Bill has brought clarity to the status of promised post-hurricane housing for displaced Jamaicans. As proceedings adjourned for the midday break, Opposition Senator Dr. Floyd Morris, the party’s spokesperson for housing and sustainable living and a visually impaired legislator, pressed the government for concrete answers about the 5,000 promised containerized homes for victims of Hurricane Melisa. Using local Jamaican vernacular to emphasize his urgency, Morris stated: “I want to know, weh di house dem deh. Where are the houses for the people that you have promised […] I look down at the wharf and I caw find dem.”

Within moments, Government Senator Abka Fitz-Henley delivered an official response, disclosing that 924 prefabricated modular and containerized homes have already arrived on the island, with hundreds more en route. Fitz-Henley explained that Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness, who holds direct ministerial responsibility for the national housing portfolio, convened a cross-agency coordination meeting with the National Housing Trust, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, and the Social Housing Programme just one day prior on Thursday. At that meeting, Holness confirmed that the full order of 5,000 units has been finalized: 924 are already cleared at Jamaican ports, a further 700 are currently in transit, and an additional 700 will be shipped in the coming weeks.

Fitz-Henley reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to delivering on its promise to support Jamaicans displaced by the destructive impact of Hurricane Melisa. He went on to draw a contrast with past housing initiatives, alleging that the previous administration’s Operation Pride programme was marred by systemic corruption that saw hundreds of millions of dollars in public taxpayer funds stolen, resulting in the arrest of a People’s National Party (PNP) activist. He emphasized that under Prime Minister Holness’ leadership, the current government prioritizes full accountability and transparency in all public spending. The modular housing relief programme, he noted, operates under strict, independent regulatory oversight to eliminate mismanagement and graft, addressing any concerns about the integrity of the initiative. By closing out the exchange, Fitz-Henley reminded Morris that his question had received an immediate, official answer just minutes after it was raised during debate.

In a long-awaited transparency move decades in the making, the U.S. Pentagon has opened the vault on more than 160 previously classified documents detailing public and official sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, the Defense Department’s official term for what are commonly known as UFOs), spanning more than 75 years of reported encounters. The publication of the files, announced Friday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, fulfills a transparency directive issued by President Donald Trump earlier this year.

Hegseth emphasized in an official statement that decades of secrecy around these records had sparked widespread, well-founded public curiosity, and that the administration was committed to giving the American public direct access to the unredacted original files. The records, hosted on the Defense Department’s public website, include entries stretching all the way back to the late 1940s – the era when modern UFO lore first entered mainstream American culture. Among the earliest documents is a 1947 compilation of multiple “flying disc” sightings, followed a year later by a top-secret Air Force intelligence memo detailing reports of “unidentified aircraft” and “flying saucers.” More contemporary entries include a 2023 incident in which three separate teams of federal law enforcement special agents independently submitted reports of glowing orange orbs in the sky that launched smaller red objects.

The declassification push traces back to February 2024, when President Trump ordered all federal agencies to begin the process of sorting through and releasing all government-held records related to UFOs and potential extraterrestrial activity, citing overwhelming public demand for greater government openness around the topic. Alongside issuing the order, the Republican president drew controversy by accusing his Democratic predecessor, former President Barack Obama, of improperly disclosing classified information during a viral podcast interview. In that conversation with host Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama addressed persistent speculation surrounding Area 51 – the highly classified Nevada military base that has been the center of UFO conspiracy theories for decades – noting, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in… Area 51.” When pressed by reporters, Trump argued Obama had broken classification protocols with his comments, while adding that he personally remained undecided on the question of extraterrestrial life: “I don’t know if they are real or not.”

To date, no formal evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life has been presented by the U.S. government. Public and official interest in UAP has surged in recent years, however, driven by a steady stream of declassified military footage of unexplained aerial encounters and growing national security concerns that some unidentified objects could be advanced surveillance or weapons technology developed by U.S. geopolitical adversaries. In a major update published just months ago in March 2024, the Pentagon confirmed that it has yet to find any conclusive evidence linking reported UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technology. The vast majority of unexplained encounters, officials found, can be traced back to ordinary human activity, including weather balloons, commercial and military aircraft, reconnaissance drones, orbital satellites, and atmospheric anomalies.