Vybz Kartel’s conviction for the murder of an associate has been quashed, with the Privy Council ruling that attempts to bribe the trial jury meant the conviction was unsafe.

The 48-year-old Jamaican dancehall star has been in jail in Jamaica since 2011 over the disappearance of Clive “Lizard” Williams, whose body has never been found.

Kartel and three others were convicted in 2014, with the singer was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 35 years, later reduced on appeal to 32-and-a-half.

Last month, they mounted a final appeal at the Privy Council in London, with their lawyers arguing that the trial judge wrongly handled allegations that one juror offered a bribe to fellow jurors to return not guilty verdicts.

According to a report by Reuters, the defendants’ appeals were allowed on Thursday, with Judge David Lloyd-Jones saying the trial judge’s decision to allow the juror alleged to have offered bribes to continue on the jury was “fatal to the safety of the convictions”.