Archive for July, 2012
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Buju Banton’s attorney filed a motion on Tuesday with the Middle District of Florida requesting that the incarcerated reggae star be granted a new trial.
This filing follows the recent decision from an Atlanta appeals court that affirmed the guilty verdict and overturned a Tampa judge’s decision to throw out a gun charge.
“We’re going to keep fighting for Buju because he shouldn’t have to do 10 years in prison, let alone 15,” Buju’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, said in an email.
If the court refuses, Markus requested that a new trial be granted on the gun charge alone.
Markus notes in the motion that if the judge denies a new trial on the gun count, the court “would have to sentence [Buju] to a consecutive five-year sentence (on top of his current 10 year sentence).”
Markus also stressed in the newly filed motion that in reviewing a request for a new trial, the court consider the “credibility of the witnesses.”
He is referring to the government’s star witness Alex Johnson, a felon who reportedly earned $3.5 million in untaxed income while working as a snitch.
While Johnson was pursuing Buju, he is said to have owed nearly $200,000 in unpaid taxes to the IRS. Although Johnson is not a U.S. citizen, he can’t be sent back to Colombia because the cartels he used to work for likely have a bounty on his head.
In the past judges have questioned his credibility and blasted the government’s reliance on him.
