The court case of Desmond “Ninjaman” Ballentine reached a decisive point after last week the Court of Appeal of Jamaica will listen for two days to the appeal arguments of the defense and the Prosecutor's Office regarding the murder case involving the singer and two co-defendants and will leave the ruling pending.
Specific, What will be decided in a future that was not determined by the court is whether the dancehall singer, your son Janiel Ballentine and his co-accused Dennis Clayton Will they continue serving life sentences or not?.
The above due to events that originated in 2009, en Lower Mall Road, St. Andrew, Kingston, regarding which the Prosecutor's Office maintained that Ninjaman, his son and Clayton participated in the murder of Ricardo Johnson after a dispute in the neighborhood.
All three were convicted of murder and shooting with intent 2017, eight years after the crime, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The defense: “should never have been brought to trial”
The defense lawyer Robert Fletcher He opened the defense arguments with a direct statement to the court: the case of ninjaman “should never have been brought to trial”.
The central argument is that The delay of more than eight years before the trial caused a “presumptive damage”, since key witnesses for the defense died before being able to testify.
“Presumptive damage does not require proof. It arises from the fact itself”, Fletcher told the court, as cited by Jamaica Gleaner.
The defense also questioned the reliability of the prosecution's witnesses' identification of Ninjaman., pointing out that one of them, despite knowing him for 17 years, I had never spoken to him.
And he also pointed out contradictions between the accounts of the male witness and the female witness about the sequence of events..
While, lawyer Peter Champagnie, representing Janiel Ballentine, rated the visual and voice identification evidence against his client as “woefully inadequate”.
According to your argument, The main witness had only two or three seconds to observe Janiel as she jumped over a fence..
The Prosecutor's Office defends the convictions
The next day, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor Kathy Ann Pyke he responded point by point to the defenses' statements.
He argued that there was evidence “convincing and coherent” that the three defendants acted together from the beginning with the intention of killing Johnson.
Pyke argued that the witnesses They had sufficient familiarity with the accused because they lived in the same community, and that the inconsistencies pointed out by the defense were matters for the jury, no reason to mistrial.
At the same time, the prosecutor Sean Nelson was more direct and stated before the court that “This was a well-organized murder in which the intention from the beginning was to murder”.
Who is Ninjaman?
Desmond Ballentine, known as Ninjaman, He is one of the most influential figures in Jamaican dancehall..
With more than three decades of career, He was one of the artists who defined the sound of the genre in the years 80 and 90, Known for his aggressive mic style and legendary sound system battles.
His arrest in 2009 marked the abrupt end of a career in full activity, while andThe court reserved its ruling and at the moment there is no announced date for the resolution.
