High drama and tension reigned supreme at the High Court on Thursday afternoon when children poisoning defendant Hofosawa Awena Rutherford was found guilty of killing her children by feeding them rat poison nearly four years ago.
At 14:00hrs, the verdict was announced to a packed courtroom of relatives and curious onlookers: guilty on both counts of manslaughter. The jury’s unanimous verdict followed two hours of deliberation.
It meant that the panel believed the evidence presented over the last few days — that Rutherford had given half a carbon tablet to each of her deceased children: one-year-old Jabari Cadogan and four-year-old Odascia Cadogan. It was established that the children died from pesticide poisoning via a highly toxic chemical called aluminum phosphide, known as carbon tablet, which is used to
A crying Hofosawa Awena Rutherford being escorted from court
kills rats.
It also meant that the jury had disbelieved Rutherford’s story: that she had bought cold tablets from a man at the Plaisance bus park who sells rat poison.
When, at 14:10h, the implications of the jury’s verdict hit home to Rutherford, who was in the prisoners’ dock, she emitted a loud scream and crashed to the floor — unfortunately on the feet of female prison officers — her sudden and dramatic fall causing her to hit her head solidly.
A deathly silence occasioned by utter shock then pervaded the courtroom; and the jury foreman, made speechless by these sudden developments, was left standing for 5 minutes as 3 female officers attempted to revive Rutherford using Limacol that her relatives had provided.
Justice Navindra Singh, who presided over the case, nevertheless seemed ready to pass sentence. He, however, adjourned the matter to this afternoon at 13:00hrs, after Rutherford’s attorney, Adrian Thompson, requested medical intervention.
The defendant was eventually revived after a 20-minute repose on the floor, and was escorted out of court and into an ambulance.
Recap
Several witnesses had testified that the children never had cold-like symptoms on the day of their demise. Police witnesses had stated that, when interviewed moments after the children’s deaths, Rutherford had repeatedly complained of stress and problems.
Rutherford had said that she had drunk two tablets herself, after administering similar tablets to her children, Odasica and Jabari; and had been hospitalised for seven days after the poisoning incident.
In an unsworn statement from the prisoner’s dock on Wednesday, the defendant, in a bout of tears and excessive shaking, had claimed that she loved her children; that she was still traumatised from losing them; that she had never bought rat poison to poison her children, and that the Police had treated her unfairly.
At court on Thursday, several persons questioned whether she had really loved her children, since she had given them rat poison to ingest.
State Prosecutor Tiffini Lyken had opined that Rutherford had strayed from her recollection of events when she said she had bought the tablets from a pharmacy in her statement on Wednesday.
During Wednesday’s hearing, father of the two deceased children, Jabari Cadogan, Sr, had testified via Skype from Brooklyn, New York, USA that he used to support his children even after he had separated from Rutherford, and that he used to communicate with them every day.
The senior Cadogan told the court he had never been told that the children were suffering from a cold.
Rutherford and the children were staying with her sister, Monica Sealey, and her husband Curt, who both testified before the jury that they had not noticed any cold symptoms on the fateful day of the children’s demise.
In this trial, Prosecutors Shawnette Austin and Abigail Gibbs had also appeared for the State.
