Correctional facility to get famous inmate
Published 12:02 am Monday, August 8, 2011
NATCHEZ — Grammy-winning reggae star Buju Banton will reportedly soon be going on a 10-year tour behind the walls of the Adams County Correctional Facility.
A Jamaican newspaper, The Jamaica Observer, reported Sunday that the star, a Jamaica native whose real name is Mark Anthony Myrie, was being transferred from the Pinellas County jail in Florida to the Corrections Corporation of America Adams County facility.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, Myrie was “in transit” Sunday.
Myrie, 38, was sentenced in federal court in Tampa, Fla., in June for conspiring to negotiate a drug deal in a police-controlled warehouse in Florida, the Observer reports.
Myrie’s defense attorney David Oscar Markus reportedly told the Observer that United States magistrate James Moody recommended that Banton serve his sentence at a facility in Florida, but a shortage of beds caused him to be transferred to the prison in Adams County.
Markus reportedly said he hopes to get a transfer for Myrie to serve his sentence in Florida to allow his family to visit him more easily.
Banton was arrested at his home in Tamarac, south Florida after almost a year of surveillance of telephone and live conversations and video recordings that included him tasting cocaine in a Saratoga warehouse.
Myrie has reportedly suggested he intends to pursue a master’s degree in economics and political science while he is incarcerated.
Myrie won the Grammy for Best Reggae album in February, just over a week before his conviction.