Grammy-award winner and reggae superstar Buju Banton is being transferred from the Pinellas County Jail in Florida to a correctional facility in Mississippi to begin serving his 10-year sentence. Mississippi???? No disrespect to Mississippi but this just seems so far removed from Buju’s roots and culture. Nonetheless, the decision has been made to transfer Buju to the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi as a result of a bed shortage in Florida.
According to the Jamaica Observer, Buju’s lawyer David Oscar Markus, although Buju’s trial judge James Moody recommended that he serve his time in Miami, the Bureau of Prisons mandated otherwise. “We are hopeful that when a bed opens up down here (Florida) that we can get him transferred so that it is easier on his family (and us) to see him,” Markus said.
The singjay was sentenced in the Sam Gibbons US Court in Tampa, Florida in June this year of conspiring to negotiate a drug deal in a police-controlled warehouse in Florida.
Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, was arrested at his home in Tamarac, South Florida after almost a year of surveillance of telephone and live conversations and video recordings that included him tasting cocaine in a Saratoga warehouse.
He has consistently pleaded his innocence and maintained that he was entrapped by government informant Alexander Johnson, who he claims was paid US$50,000 to ensnare him. Buju has since indicated that he will pursue his higher education in the form of a master’s degree in economics and political science while he is incarcerated.
His attorneys have also indicated that they are planning to appeal his sentence before a three-member panel of judges in an appellate court in Georgia.
SOURCE: Jamaica Observer
