The first legal volleys were fired Tuesday in reggae star Buju Banton's lurid drug trial in Tampa, where the singer is facing potentially serious jail time after pleading not guilty to felony charges of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. As the Toronto Sun reports, Buju's lawyer filed documents to a Tampa federal court yesterday, in which he claims that his client was the victim of a government run scheme aimed at trapping the controversial Jamaican legend. Attorney David Markus specified in the documents that the government had paid an informant to surreptitiously convince Buju to buy cocaine. Markus is also urging the court to release the name of the alleged informant.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had previously insisted that Buju independently contacted the confidential informant about the drug deal, and that he later met with the informant at a restaurant, where DEA officials used cameras and discretely placed microphones to record the interaction. As Tampa Bay Online reports, though, Markus writes in his brief that there is irrefutable evidence that Buju's contact point was a "paid government informant." Not only that, the attorney also claims to possess recordings of conversations between his client and the informant, in which, according to the defense, the informant continues to pressure Buju into purchasing cocaine, even in the face of Buju's "repeated attempts to put off" the source.
