Doubt is still lingering over the final fate of dancehall icon Mark Anthony “Buju Banton” Myrie, following news of a mere two-month reduction to his prison sentence. Last week the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prison announced that the artiste will be released on December 8, 2018, instead of the original February 2019 release date.
No confirmation, however, has come from the federal prosecutors overseeing the case, and whether the sentences was part of Banton’s recent plea bargain, where he agreed to waive all future appeals of his 2001 case for reduced charges. Rosemary Duncan, coordinator of the Buju Banton Defence Support Committee, has also not publically commented on the sentence.
“If Rosemary isn’t commenting, I doubt the news,” says DJ Howie of Homestead, Florida who describes himself as “a very close friend of the reggae artist and his family.”
“I will only believe the news if Buju lawyers say so,” says Howie. “[I’ve] had no reliable word of the reduction in Buju’s sentence.”
Miami Beach entertainment attorney Bridgette Avalon said there has been so many rumors attached the dancehall star’s case, that she is being cautious in commenting until she learns the facts related to reported reduction he Banton’s sentence.
Avalon said “information on the reported reduction of Buju’s sentence has not been forthcoming, as I understanding the Bureau of Prisons has not expounded on the information on its website, and no word have been heard from his attorneys on the matter.”
Buju, known to his thousands of fans in South Florida and worldwide, is currently serving a 10-year sentence in the McRae Correctional Center in Georgia. A former resident of South Florida, Buju was arrested in Miami in 2009 on cocaine and gun charges, and after two trials, was convicted in 2011 on the cocaine charges.
