Incarcerated Dancehall star Ninjaman will return to the Home Circuit court on June 2 as his legal team presses ahead with the appeal of his murder conviction.<\/p>\n
Attorney-at-law Robert Fletcher confirmed that the\u00a0\u2018Border Clash\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>deejay would return to court but did not reveal any details about the strategy of the legal team.<\/p>\n \u201cThe team is going through the transcript now and noting the discrepancies and conflicting testimonies so that they can mount a formidable defence,\u201d a source told Observer Online.<\/p>\n Ninjaman\u2019s murder appeal was impacted negatively by the sudden illness and death of his attorney-at-law Valerie Neita-Robertson, the 71-year-old legal powerhouse who was spearheading his appeal. Roberston fell ill last October and passed away peacefully on February 25 this year surrounded by her family.<\/p>\n Neita-Robertson had intended to challenge the deejay\u2019s murder conviction on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial, which is a constitutional entitlement of every citizen.<\/p>\n In an interview years ago, Neita-Robertson had pointed to the length of the delays in the case which had seen 17 trial dates and 23 mentions before the actual trial.<\/p>\n It is alleged that on the day in question, the deceased, Ricardo Johnson was sweeping his yard in the company of a friend on Mall Road, St Andrew, when a motor car with three men aboard drove up.\u00a0 An argument developed between Johnson\u2019s friend and the men, who left but later returned with guns blazing.\u00a0 Johnson was fatally shot in the incident. Ninja Man turned himself into the police shortly after the incident, upon hearing that he was being sought as a person of interest in the case.<\/p>\n The trial involved seven witnesses, including one who testified that a group of men, led by Ninjaman, entered a yard on the day in question. It was further alleged that the deejay fired two shots at the witness, and he had to flee the premises.<\/p>\n \u201cThe length of the delay deprived him of his alibi witnesses, and that would have made a great difference. Instead, we had to challenge the credibility of the prosecution\u2019s witnesses without being able to produce witnesses to substantiate Ninjaman\u2019s argument that he was in Mandeville at the time of the shooting,\u201d she had said at the time.<\/p>\n Neita-Robertson also believed that Ninjaman\u2019s fame and past reputation weighed heavily on the decision by the seven-member jury. The crown relied heavily on the concept of \u2018common design\u2019 to infer that the three convicted men were acting together in a common design, which was aimed at using the guns to cause grievous bodily harm to Mr Ricardo Johnson.<\/p>\n The \u2018Don Gorgon\u2019 was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in November 2017 for the murder of Ricardo Johnson in March 2009. He was convicted along with his son, Janeil Ballentine, and Dennis Clayton.\u00a0 Ninja Man was sentenced to serve at least 25 years in prison before he was eligible for parole.<\/p>\n Ninjaman is one of the greatest living masters of lyrical clash. He is known for songs such as Permit to Bury, Free Food Ticket, Ninja Mi Ninja, Murder Dem, Border Clash, Bad Boy No Cub Scout, Church Heathen featuring Shaggy and Dweet featuring Specialist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Incarcerated Dancehall star Ninjaman will return to the Home Circuit court on June 2 as his legal team presses ahead with the appeal of his murder conviction. Attorney-at-law Robert Fletcher confirmed that the\u00a0\u2018Border Clash\u2019\u00a0deejay would return to court but did not reveal any details about the strategy of the legal team. \u201cThe team is going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10529,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528\/revisions\/10529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}