- KINGSTON, Jamaica: The US drug trial of reggae star Buju Banton is the talk of Jamaica, where islanders are debating his guilt or innocence on street corners, in offices, in letters to the editor and on social networking websites.
Banton, a four-time Grammy nominee who rose from the slums of Kingston to success in the 1990s, was arrested on drug charges in December and a Florida jury is deliberating whether he conspired to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer. The 12-person panel reconvenes Monday in Tampa federal court. In the Jamaican capital, some people are dissecting every detail of Banton's case, a few even comparing him to the late reggae legend Bob Marley. "I've been following it close because Buju is big in Jamaica, like a Bob Marley. Way I see it, they need to free the man cause they don't have any concrete evidence against him," Charles Barrett, a resident of the capital, said Sunday. For others the case is more of a curiosity, a media-fed sensation that distracts from weightier news.