News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug. 26, 2011: In exactly eighteen days from today, accused Jamaican drug lord, Christopher Michael “Dudus” Coke, will face a jury trial in a New York City court.
Coke, who was extradited to the U.S. in June last year following a nationwide manhunt in Jamaica, is charged in a two-count superseding indictment with conspiring to distribute marijuana and cocaine and conspiring to traffics in firearms. Trial is currently scheduled to begin on September 12, 2011.
The countdown to the trial comes as defense this week got their “motion to exclude all wiretap evidence from use at trial” denied by Judge Robert P. Patterson.
The prosecution has so far argued that Coke controlled the Tivoli Gardens area in Kingston, Jamaica since the early 1990s and is to have armed gunmen in the area with firearms he imports illegally.
Coke is also alleged to have controlled a criminal organization known as the “Shower Posse” or “Presidential Click,” and this organization has been involved in drug trafficking of marijuana and cocaine in the New York area, Kingston, Jamaica, and elsewhere, from at least in or about 1994 up to and including October 2007.
According to the government’s case against Coke, the evidence includes, among other things, recordings of intercepted telephone calls collected in Jamaica and the United States, testimony of cooperating witnesses, and seizures of narcotics.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
