Attorney-at-law Roy Fairclough, one of the most renowned lawyers in western Jamaica and a member of Jamaica’s Legal Aid Council, passed away around 8 a.m. on Sunday (August 15) at the Montego Bay Hospital in Mount Salem, St James.
Fairclough, who had been ailing for the past three years was in his early 70s and had been practicing law since 1975.
In 2010 and 2011, he represented reputed Stone Crusher gang leader Eldon Calvert on multiple counts of murder allegedly committed in Salt Spring, St James; and in 2017, he represented Sylvan Reid, then councillor for the Salt Spring division, on a charge of causing death by dangerous driving in relation to the death of Jevaughn Whitmore, son of Reggae Boyz coach Theodore Whitmore.
Fairclough most recently represented attorney Tara Morgan in the 2019 case of the loss of 19 firearms and a number of ammunitions from her family’s Montego Bay-based security company, before Morgan changed attorneys.
Outside of the courtroom, Fairclough was most known in 2014 for his efforts to have the local Rastafarian community compensated for the injustice they suffered as a result of the infamous Coral Gardens event in 1963.