Attorney cries foul as 7-year case delayed again
Published:Tuesday | October 15, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Barbara Gayle, Justice Coordinator
Attorney-at-law Diane Jobson, who is representing a man who has been in custody for seven years without facing trial, says the justice system has failed her client.
Jobson has scoffed at the court's mission statement, 'Timely delivery of a high standard of justice for all'.
She says that promise has been unfulfilled in many cases.
Lynford Allen, who Jobson represents, has been before the Home Circuit Court since 2006.
Allen's case was set for trial yesterday but had to be put off to February 17 next year because a murder case which started two weeks ago has not been completed.
Jobson said she was going to make an application in November for Allen to be granted bail. She pointed out that Allen's case has been set for trial 18 times but had been adjourned for various reasons.
Allen was charged jointly with several other men for the 2005 murder of financial analyst Jamie Lue.
The other men were freed earlier this year as the Crown did not have sufficient evidence to prove its case against them.
It is being alleged that Lue was abducted while travelling in Constant Spring, St Andrew, in December 2005. He was taken to Grants Pen, St Andrew, where he was forced to disclose the PINs for his debit cards. Withdrawals were made from automated banking machines.
Lue's body was found in the back of his Honda CRV along Mayfair Avenue, at the foot of Beverly Hills, on December 31, 2005.
The trial of three other men who have been in custody since 2006 for the November 2005 murder of 30-year-old Jamaica AIDS Support employee Steve Harvey was also put off to February next year.
Harvey was abducted from his home by gunmen who robbed him of several items, including his debit card, and then shot him. Harvey's body was found on November 30, 2005.