Gleaner Writer | Howard Campbell

Anxiety was fever pitch in Buju Banton’s old neighbourhood of Victoria Park yesterday where family and friends awaited a verdict in the singjay’s trial for drug possession.

For the second straight day, the 14-member jury failed to return a verdict in the case which began on Monday in a Federal court in Tampa, Florida.

They are expected to reconvene on Monday when Banton is expected to hear a guilty or not guilty decision for charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine.

Banton pleaded not guilty to the charges but faces life in prison if found guilty.

“It’s been tough, very tough for the family, but God will prevail. I know he’s coming home free,” said Olga Myrie, Banton’s stepmother.

Myrie interrupted the con-versation with The Gleaner at noon when she and neighbours dashed frantically to her living room to catch the television and radio news. They learned that the jury was still
deliberating.

Singer, not a chemist

Olga Myrie said she last saw her stepson just before he left for the United States early last year to promote his Rasta Got Soul album. She insists the man she helped raise is innocent.

“I know him as a singer, not a chemist,” she said.

That is the popular ‘verdict’ in Victoria Park, a working-class housing scheme in Whitehall Avenue where Banton, real name Mark Myrie, grew up.

Georgia Bailey-Forrester, a long-time resident, said Banton has never been involved in hard drugs.

“I never hear of that. From mi hear, mi nuh believe,” she said.

Curtis Cole, a deejay who goes by the moniker Virgo Man, told The Gleaner he and Banton made the sound-system rounds as budding artistes in the early 1990s. A guilty sentence, he stated, would be devastating.

“A good, good youth, outspoken and determined. Him do good works ’bout the place. Him cyan go prison and waste that,” he said.

The home Olga Myrie shares with Banton’s father Benjamin, is a shrine of sorts to her 37-year-old stepson. The walls are lined with photographs of his days as a hot, young dancehall deejay in the early
1990s to his current status as a roots-reggae powerhouse.

Benjamin Myrie was not at home when The Gleaner went to his home yesterday.

Waiting for a verdict, his wife disclosed, has been tough for him.

Banton has been incarcerated in a Florida jail since last December when he and two alleged accomplices were arrested by Federal agents in the city of Sarasota. They said he and the men, James Mack and Ian
Thomas, had just negotiated a cocaine deal at a nearby warehouse.

The alleged deal was set up by Alexander Johnson, an undercover informant for the United States government. Mack and Thomas pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five or more
kilograms of cocaine.