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Here's what happened:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
Elvin Penner, flanked by a group of personal guards, arrived in the court's parking lot, just before 9 o'clock, the expected start time for the court hearing. He made his way up the steps and into the court room of the Chief Justice.

Outside, police officers were posted on the looking out, no doubt ensuring that no one would attempt to throw eggs or whatever else at him. But there would be none of that today; no PUP protest was scheduled simultaneously to cause political interference.

But, it was a lengthy wait for the case to the start. At around 11:20 a.m., after 2 hours and 20 minutes of waiting the Chief Justice entered the court room and the hearing began.

About half hour later, it was over, and the race began between the media on one side, and Penner and his guards on the next. The objective was to oblige Penner into making comments today. It quickly became apparent that the job of the personal guards were two-fold. They were there for Penner's personal safety, but also to prevent the awaiting media from getting to close to the politician and try to press for comments.

He drove off without a second look back. For now he's free and clear, the COLA appeal against his acquittal had failed.

Kareem Musa - Attorney for Private Prosecutors
"Fundamentally the appeal has been dismissed, but he certainly agreed with us in many instances that the magistrate had erred. In many respects in her decision, she had erred in law. But it was not so much so as to amount to an overturn of her decision. So, he has found that there was no evidence before the magistrate for her to have given a decision and that's why he ruled today that he would not overturned that decision. But in many respects she did in fact erred. Our biggest concern has always been the involvement of all these functionaries of the government. We are talking about the Ombudsman, who has decline to assist in any way under the Freedom of Information Act. We are talking about the Auditor General, if you recall COLA actually had to get a leak of the Auditor's General's report."

Daniel Ortiz
"The Chief Justice suggested that its speculating what's in that file. Nobody knows exactly what's in the file."

Kareem Musa - Attorney for Private Prosecutors
"Like I said on the last occasion, we know what is out there in the public domain and if that could be formalize into concrete evidence, if the Commissioner were to do his job - the very same Chief Justice was the one who saw that evidence and said you know what, this thing warrants an investigation."

Daniel Ortiz
"Well Mr. Brackett, let's be fair - you failed twice. You've tried your best. What's going to happen now?"

Geovannie Brackett - Private Prosecutor
"When you say failed twice, Daniel, the last time we were here, you managed to get a statement, you the media from Elvin Penner. Would you consider that a win? That's rhetorical question. The fact that we had Elvin Penner being brought to court, just like every other young man out there for a stock of weed. I consider that a win and like the scripture verse said "we fought a good fight." What we've seen here, is you want to disguise evidence, if you want to hide it from the courts - just give it to the police. That's what it boils out to in my point of view. Because what we have seen here today did not exonerate Elvin Penner. All the court was saying is that we were not able to produce evidence. We didn't have legitimate rights to those, what in our view would be strong evidence or could be evidence. We will never know what's in that file it appears, as long as we have this DPP, as long as we have this commissioner and as long as we have this government. We will never know if Elvin Penner would have been guilty or not and that's the truth that has happen here today, but we have fought a good fight and COLA, in no way, feels let down. We are not demoralized."

Aaron Humes, reporter
"Do you think that perhaps too much reliance was place getting this file, getting this information from legal sources and not perhaps going out and finding these people and talking to them?"

Geovannie Brackett - Private Prosecutor
"Aaron Humes, I would challenge you and try to go out and get some stories and when you don't get them, I will ask you the same thing - you try to rely as a journalist. Some things are just difficult. Let's face it. These people were not the police. We did attempt. You are speaking on a basis that you know that we did not go out to speak to these people. We did our investigation, many of them - these people didn't want to talk. Some were trying to talk to us in private and that's why some gave us the leak material and that's it for that. It's not a publicity stunt for COLA. What we did is a very serious thing on behalf of the people."

Daniel Ortiz
"Are you considering going to the Court of Appeals, a third attempt?"

Geovannie Brackett - Private Prosecutor
"I think that we would have to seriously discuss it amongst ourselves."

As you heard, COLA and its attorney had harsh words for the Director of Public Prosecutions suggesting that she and the commissioner of police are not cooperating with them to somehow protect Penner. This evening, DPP Cheryl-Lynn Vidal told us via email quote, "My mandate is to prosecute persons accused of crimes. My mandate does not change depending on who the accused person is and it is a grave insult to my Office and to me personally to suggest that I am protecting anyone. I met on more than one occasion with...COLA and...their attorney. I communicated to them that what had been provided by the police did not in my view enable me to commence a prosecution...I later put this in writing to the Commissioner. I did not at any time suggest to the Commissioner that he had a legal duty to provide them with a copy of the file as I am well aware that no such duty exists. It was simply my position that given the nature of the matter, it would have been an appropriate course. The Commissioner refused to hand over the file which was then in his possession. That was his decision." End quote.

When Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin read out his decision, he noted that his findings were that the appellants have no entitlement to the police file.

He said, quote, "This court cannot concede how such and such exercise in speculation would be in the interest of justice."

After explaining how each of the grounds of appeal were flawed, the Chief Justice announced that the case was dismissed, and the acquittal of Elvin Penner was affirmed.

In our story, we noted the late start of the hearing, which was held up by the Chief Justice who arrived more than 2 hours late. Before reading out his judgment, he apologized to everyone for the late start, and reminded that he is on vacation at this time.