98-year jail term challenge: CoA defers hearing of appeal until further notice

The appeal filed by the 30-year-old mother who killed her two young children by feeding them rat poison was adjourned until further notice on Monday by the Court of Appeal.

Hofosuwa Rutherford’s appeal against her conviction for two counts of manslaughter and her 98-year jail sentence was initially set for hearing on Monday.
But due to administrative reasons, the court was forced to adjourn the case.
The presiding Judges in this matter will be Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory-Barnes and Rishi Persaud.

Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (ADPP) Teshana Lake will present the State’s case while Rutherford will be represented by Attorney-at-Law Dexter Smartt.
Rutherford was found unanimously guilty in 2018 of two counts of manslaughter over the death of her children after a trial before Justice Navindra Singh and a jury at the High Court in Demerara.
On the first count, for the killing of four-year-old Hodascia Cadogan, Rutherford was sentenced to 45 years in jail; while on the second count, for the killing of one-year-old Jabari Cadogan, she was ordered to serve 53 years in prison. The prison terms were ordered to be served consecutively, meaning that her cumulative sentence is 98 years.
The State had adduced evidence that the mother had given each of her children half of a tablet of aluminium phosphide (rat poison) on March 27, 2014, at Supply Branch Road, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara (ECD), where they all resided.

During her trial, Rutherford’s initial story was that she had bought cold tablets from a man at the Plaisance bus park in Georgetown, who sells rat poison. However, the logic behind this story was not accepted by the jury. Rutherford had been hospitalised for seven days after the poisoning of her offspring, and she had said she had drunk two rat poison tablets after giving same to her children.
“No one in this world loves my children more than I do. I love them to my soul. I am sorry for my shortcomings and my faults,” the convicted children killer had stated at her sentencing hearing.
She had then turned her attention to Justice Singh, who she begged to have mercy on her.
“Justice Singh, even God in heaven above is merciful, and I am asking you to grant me a second chance so I can make things right,” a crying Rutherford had pleaded.
Meanwhile, Justice Singh had seemed perplexed as to why the State had indicted the mother for the lesser offence of manslaughter, contending that “everything points to murder”.