SHOWER POSSE DEPORTEE RICHARD STORYTELLER MORRISON

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Embattled ‘Storyteller’ returns
Published: Sunday | February 3, 2013 19 Comments

Richard ‘Storyteller’ Morrison – Ian Allen/Photographer
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer

Alleged former Shower Posse gang leader Richard ‘Storyteller’ Morrison
has returned to Jamaica bitter and ashamed of his political leaders
who he says “betrayed, abandoned and sold me”.

Back on local soil, after spending 22 years in a United States (US)
prison, a relaxed Morrison proclaimed that he was pleased to be home a
free man.

The prolonged embrace between Morrison and his mother minutes after he
was processed and released by local police last Thursday spoke volumes
of the relief of the man whose 1991 high-profile extradition generated
a near five-year-long diplomatic stand-off between Jamaica and the US.

Morrison was whisked away to the US, in 1991, through what local
officials described as “an administrative error” before his appeal
against his extradition was completed.

“I am past bitter. I am embarrassed for these people who claimed to be
scholars and claimed to have integrity,” declared Morrison in an
interview with The Sunday Gleaner immediately after he was deported to
Jamaica.

“I have never dealt with a more corrupt set of people,” he charged.

Storyteller spoke easily as he described his case from the one-year
stay in custody in Jamaica to the prison bars in the US as an
“extraordinary prosecution for an ordinary man”.

JUSTICE DENIED

He said: “I have been pursuing my due-diligence claim since 1991 to no
avail. I can say that I have regained my liberty, but justice has
eluded me to this day.”

Asked how he felt to be back in Jamaica, Morrison declared, “Getting
off the aircraft in Jamaica was entirely different from getting on
another 23 years ago.”

He added: “I was forcefully taken out of the country by multiple
police officers in violation of my due-process rights. Although I told
them that I had an appeal pending, nobody seemed to care.

“I was threatened with physical force, even the threat of death … if I
refused to comply with their order to go with the US federal
marshals.”

Morrison charged that while he has interfaced with dishonest men in
the streets, both in Jamaica and the US, nothing could be compared
with the treachery he discovered in high places.

“The reputations of the men in the streets precede them. If a person
is not a trustworthy person in the streets, someone will inform you
that that person is not to be trusted and you have the option of
avoiding them,” Morrison told The Sunday Gleaner.

“This is the first time I had to rely on the ‘trust’ of persons who I
did not choose to deal with,” said Morrison.

“I have never dealt with a more corrupt set of people. Supreme Court
case laws said it can’t be done, but they did it anyway.”

An obviously bitter Morrison had harsh words for the administration
that was in power when he was extradited.

“I lost my liberty on July 4, 1990 in Jamaica and I was incarcerated
until January 31, 2013 – unconstitutionally, I might add – by
governmental actions from certain members of the previous P.J.
Patterson administration.”

Morrison charged that the Government of the day acted “in collusion
with certain jurisdictional members of and executive branch members of
the United States”.

RIGHTS BREACHED

Morrison charged that his constitutional rights were breached on more
than five occasions within the jurisdictions of both the US and
Jamaica.

He pointed to what he said was a breach of his constitutional rights
to due process in Jamaica, having been denied his right to appeal
before being carted off to the US, as well as a violation of the
extradition treaty.

Morrison complained that the US authorities also trampled on his
due-process rights under the Fifth Amendment.

Most significantly, he contended, the US officials blatantly violated
Article Three of that country’s constitution when his case was tried
in the wrong jurisdiction, despite the vehement protests by his legal
team.

“In essence, I had been incarcerated on the judgment of a court that
lacked the constitutional power from June 14, 1991 to January 31,
2013, when I got off that aircraft in Jamaica,” said Morrison.

“What they did was not a mistake as case laws and the US constitution
says it cannot be done, but they just threw everything out the
window.”

While he has vowed to continue his fight for redress, Morrison
harbours other dreams.

Although the children he left behind are now adults, Morrison said he
would be trying to get back as much quality time with them after he
spent much of last Thursday being processed at Harman Barracks at Up
Park Camp then at the Denham Town Police Station before being allowed
to meet his family.

The ‘Storyteller’ story

Richard Orville ‘Storyteller’ Morrison, then 40, and his associate,
Lester Lloyd Coke, better known as ‘Jim Brown’, had been arrested on
extradition warrants after United States law-enforcement agencies
accused them of being the leaders of the notorious Shower Posse.
They were wanted for trial in south Florida, in connection with a
number of gruesome crimes committed by members of the Shower Posse,
which originated out of Tivoli Gardens in west Kingston.

Both were seeking leave to appeal their extradition orders to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.

Jim Brown perished in a mysterious fire, which gutted his prison cell
on February 23, 1991.

On June 12, 1991, an admini-strative error in the registry of the
Jamaican Court of Appeal – the misplacing of a document confirming
Morrison’s intention to appeal – led to him being surrendered
prematurely to US law-enforcement agents.

EFFORTS TO RETURN FAILED

The Jamaican Government made diplomatic and legal efforts to have the
Americans return him, since he had not been legally extradited, but
these failed.

In April 1992, he was tried in the Middle District Court, Fort Myers,
Florida, and sentenced to 241/2 years’ imprisonment without parole on
cocaine charges.

At the time, the Morrison case generated a lot of discussion in
Jamaica and in the US and escalated into an international dispute of
sorts between the two countries, with the Jamaican Government
complaining that there had been a breach of the extradition treaty.

Extraditions from Jamaica to the US were also suspended.

The stance of the US authorities then was that they were not going to
release someone once that accused person was in the country, even if
he had an appeal pending elsewhere and despite how he had got to
America in the first place.

In June 1995, K.D. Knight, then minister of national security and
justice, explained to Parliament Jamaica’s position on the Morrison
case and on the extradition treaty in general.

He said that on the instructions of Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs had sent two diplomatic notes to the US government.

The first note brought to the attention of the US the fact that
Morrison had been tried for an offence other than the offence for
which he had been extradited in circumstances which constituted a
breach of Article XIV of the extradition treaty.

The second diplomatic note proposed negotiations with the US to amend
the extradition treaty.