Kingston.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn has called on the public not to blame her office or the police after a Supeme Court judge instructed a jury to return a not guilty verdict in one of the two murder cases against popular entertainer Vybz Kartel yesterday.
Llewellyn told the media the public should focus their attention on what she described as the country's "intimidatory environment" that is scaring away witnesses.
The DPP said quite often witnesses are refusing to go into the witness protection programme and end up returning to the same communities where the accused person resides.
According to Llewellyn, in some cases, witnesses will accept money from relatives or friends of an accused person to discontinue a case or simply refuse to attend court.
"So even if the prosecutor or the investigator is a genius, if the witness refuses to testify, there is nothing we can do. We are not a banana republic, we have standlards," Llewllyn insisted.
"People who want justice, you can't sit on your veranda, see a crime and then just watch the world go by," she pleaded.
Kartel, whose given name is Adidja Palmer, was acquitted along with his two co-accused, of the murder of St Catherine businessman Barrington Burton in July 2011, after Justice Bryan Sykes refused to allow the statements of two witnesses to be admitted into evidence.
The judge told the court that he was not convinced the prosecution had taken enough steps to locate the witnesses.
Prosecutors later informed the court they would offer no more evidence against Kartel.
This development comes four months after two other highly publicised cases ended in acquittals, with concerns emerging about the conduct of police investigations.
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