‘Dudus’ puts up a fight

LOCAL lawyers for former Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke will be seeking several declarations in the Supreme Court which they believe will assist Coke’s New York-based legal team in having the wiretap evidence excluded from his upcoming gun and drug trial in the US.

The motions are expected to be filed by Friday of next week by Chukwuemeka and Carolyn Reid-Cameron, who have been hired by Coke’s lead New York lawyer Stephen H Rosen to handle the local leg of the work. Former judge, Justice Priya Levers, who resides in the Cayman Islands, is working as consultant to the local team.

 

COKE… due in court on July 8 for preliminary hearing 1/1

The expected action in the local courts follows on the heels of a motion filed Tuesday in the United States District Court, in the Southern District of New York, in which Coke’s lawyers have argued that the use of the wiretap information would be a breach of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.

Among the declarations to be sought by the local attorneys is that Coke’s constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of expression were breached when his intercepted conversations were shared with investigators in the United States.

Should the local Supreme Court grant the declaration, the ruling would be relied on by Coke’s legal team in New York to assist with its motion that was filed on Tuesday.

“With that declaration the United States Government must be mindful that the information it is relying on has violated Mr Coke’s constitutional rights and is unlawful,” Rosen told the Observer yesterday.

Coke’s criminal trial, Rosen said, could get under way in August or September this year — little over a year since his apprehension following a bloody resistance in Jamaica in May and extradition to the US in June 2010. Coke is next due in court on July 8 for a preliminary hearing.

Coke’s local legal team will also file in the Supreme Court an application asking for the unsealing of the affidavits submitted by the police commissioners in 2004, 2005 and 2006 for the approval to intercept Coke’s communications. The New York team will also be relying on the documents, if unsealed, to make its case that the wiretap information was illegally obtained and should be thrown out.

Yesterday, Rosen alleged during an interview with the Observer that in applying for permission to intercept Coke’s communication, the commissioners misled the Jamaican Supreme Court in that they did not reveal that the information would have be shared with the United States. He said also that the court was not informed of the two MOUs signed in 2004 by Dr Peter Phillips, the then security minister, which gave permission for the US to intercept the conversations of Jamaicans. This, Rosen said, amounted to a breach of Coke’s constitutional rights and Jamaica’s Interception of Communications Act.

“This is an egregious violation of the constitution and the law,” said Rosen while expressing confidence that the US court will dismiss the wiretap evidence.