Parish Judge Sandrea Wong-Small ordered the immediate release of Tommy Lee Sparta from jail when the matter was brought up in the St James Parish Court on Tuesday morning.
According to Wong-Small, the Gothic Dancehall artiste was improperly detained under the Public State of Emergency.
The ruling comes a week after the Judge gave the police seven days to justify the ‘Happy Life’ deejay’s detention, following a habeas corpus application made on Tommy Lee Sparta’s behalf by his lawyers Tom Tavares-Finson and Donahue Martin.
Tommy Lee Sparta, whose given name is Leroy Russell, was taken in custody at the Half-Way-Tree Police Station by C-TOC officers two weeks ago. The entertainer was then transferred to the Freeport police station in St James.
This is the fifth time Sparta has been taken into custody in the past two years.
Sparta along with three others, were charged jointly in February 2014 with suspected breaches of the Law Reform (Fraudulent Transaction) (Special Provisions) Act, 2013. The trial was scheduled to begin last October.
In June 2017, he was questioned and subsequently released by members of the Elleston Road Police Station about a shooting in the division. In January that same year, former head of the St James Police division, Senior Superintendent Marlon Nesbeth listed the artiste as a person of interest in relation to crime in sections of Flanker in St James.
Source: The Tropixs