The Bahaman straw vendors who are cooling their heels in a New York prison will have to wait a little longer for their day in court.<\/p>\n
Brent Symonette, DPM and Minister of Foreign Affairs for The Bahamas, told a local newspaper that the vendors have been charged, but he did not know the date for their main court hearing.\u00a0 This usually occurs within 30 days of an arrest.<\/p>\n
The court has appointed lawyers for the nine vendors. The lawyers will be paid by the State of New York.<\/p>\n
The Bahamians were arrested on September 15th as they waited to board a Jet Blue flight back to Nassau after shopping in New York City for counterfeit designer bags and jewellery that they intended to sell at their Straw Market stalls back home.<\/p>\n
They were charged with conspiracy to defraud the US by the trafficking of counterfeit goods. They could face a maximum sentence of three years in prison.<\/p>\n
Except for one of the women who was able to meet her bond requirements, the vendors are being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in south Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The vendors: Roshanda Rolle, Gayle Rolle, Marva Ferguson, Marvette Ferguson, Patricia Hanna, Shamone Thompson, Margaret Pierre, Judy Duncombe and Tracy Davis – have all admitted to having knowledge that the goods they purchased were counterfeit and\/or illegal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bahaman straw vendors who are cooling their heels in a New York prison will have to wait a little longer for their day in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[32,31],"class_list":["post-2693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}