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Jawara McIntosh, 35, speaking for the first time in several court appearances, told the judge he wouldn’t dare jump bail.
“I have already shown by my track record that I’m not a flight risk,” he told Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejian. “And it would be absurd for me to publicly go to Jamaica and not come back.
“This woman,” he said, referring to a Daily Voice reporter, “is taking notes right now. I can’t hide.
“I’m a musician. That’s how I feed my family, and the majority of my bookings come from overseas.”
The lack of an extradition treaty with Jamaica made both the bail security company and its underwriter hinky about allowing McIntosh to travel, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Keith Travers told the judge.
McIntosh previously flew to Jamaica for an event memorializing Peter Tosh, an original member of Bob Marley and the Wailers, while awaiting trial for a Father’s Day weekend 2013 bust.
At the time, bail was $200,000. It has since been reduced to $75,000.
The trial has been postponed several times. But on Friday, Oct. 17, Jerejian set a Nov. 2 cutoff for any plea deal.
McIntosh didn’t have a license — and had open bottles of booze on the front seat — when officers stopped his rental car for recklessly cutting off other motorists on Route 17, Mahwah police said.
He and his wife, Carlotta Z. Leslie, “denied any knowledge that the marijuana was in the vehicle,” police said at the time.
The officer who pulled over the 2013 Nissan Maxima said McIntosh appeared under the influence of some type of drug. McIntosh and Leslie also gave conflicting accounts, he said.
The vehicle was searched, with McIntosh’s consent, after other officers arrived: They found two large pieces of luggage in the trunk that reeked of pot, Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said at the time.
Two bundles of marijuana were inside one and a third in the other, Batelli said. One was shrink-wrapped, he said, and the others wrapped in duct tape.
Travers has offered the Dorchester, Mass. couple five years in state prison each — 12 months of which they must serve before being eligible for parole — if they plead guilty to first-degree possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute it.
Meanwhile, McIntosh continues to record and perform under the name Tosh-1.
“There are just too many medical reports and medical professionals who believe in the medicinal benefits of marijuana to ignore the big government push to limit access,” he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT last year.
“The only ones who should fear it are the pharmaceutical companies whose medicines rarely work, or work with enormous side effects.”
A California/Colorado non-profit group called Cannibas Patriots Unite (CPUnite.org), claims McIntosh was arrested for “driving while dread[locked” and contends that he merely had an herb that in dozens of states is considered to have medicinal value.
Grammy winner Peter Tosh (Winston Hubert McIntosh) was an international recording star who achieved in the U.S. from his 1978 duet with Mick Jagger on the Temptations song “Don’t Look Back.”
He fought publicly against apartheid and for the legalization of marijuana for much of his career.
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