Appeal against 98-year jail sentence: Mother convicted in poisoning death of her children to know fate Wednesday

The Court of Appeal is scheduled to render a decision on Wednesday in an appeal brought by a mother who wishes to reverse a 98-year prison term for poisoning her two children to death.
Hosfosuwa Amena Rutherford, 30, was found guilty of the offence of manslaughter in regard to the deaths of her two children — four-year-old Hodascia Cadogan and one-year-old Jabari Cadogan — by a jury in the High Court of Demerara following a trial before Justice Navindra Singh.

She had fed the children rat poison in May 2014. On the first count, for the killing of Hodascia, Rutherford was sentenced to 45 years in jail; while on the second count, for the killing of Jabari, she was sentenced to 53 years’ imprisonment. The prison terms were ordered to be served consecutively, meaning that her cumulative sentence is 98 years.
Rutherford’s appeal was heard on June 19, by acting Chancellor of the Judiciary Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory-Barnes and Rishi Persaud.
Attorney-at-Law Dexter Smartt represented Rutherford while Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (ADPP) Teshana Lake presented the State’s case.
Rutherford has claimed, via her lawyer, that the Judge presiding over her trial neglected to consider the voluntariness of the self-incriminating statements the Police said she made.
She also argued in her appeal of her conviction that the 98-year prison term she received for the killing of her children was excessive and out of compliance with sentencing guidelines.

Lake, in her submissions, acknowledged that the voluntariness should have been decided by the trial Judge. Nevertheless, she stated that a thorough examination of his summary to the jury, particularly the instruction to the jury regarding how to handle Rutherford’s caution statement, would have taken into consideration the circumstances surrounding the giving of the statements.
When the facts and circumstances of the extant case are examined, Lake said that “concurrent sentence may have been the way to go, especially since the overall criminality from the sentences of 45 years and 53 years would have been reflected based on the sentence.”
She agreed with defence counsel that the 98 years’ sentence is disproportionate and excessive.

Bearing in mind that the Court of Appeal stated that the starting point for manslaughter would be 25 years, Lake submitted that the sentences ought to have run concurrently and asked the court to consider the totality principle when resentencing Rutherford.
During the woman’s trial in 2018, the State had adduced evidence that this mother had given each of her children half of a tablet of aluminium phosphide (rat poison) on March 27, 2014, at their home. Rutherford’s defence was that she had bought cold tablets at the Plaisance bus park in Georgetown from a man who sells rat poison, but 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 the 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 child killer had stated at her sentencing hearing.
She had then turned her attention to Justice Singh, whom 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.
Justice Singh had, however, seemed perplexed as to why the State had indicted this mother for the lesser offence of manslaughter. He had contended that “everything points to murder”. (G1)