Poisoning death of children: Court of Appeal cuts mother’s jail sentence from 98 to 30 years

By Feona Morrison

In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld the two manslaughter convictions of 30-year-old Hosfosuwa Amena Rutherford, who fatally poisoned her two children. However, after concluding that the original jail term was excessive and out of compliance with established sentencing guidelines and the totality principle, the appellate court reduced the trial court’s sentence of 98 years to 30 years.

Rutherford becomes eligible for parole after 20 years.
A jury in the High Court of Demerara had found her guilty of two counts of manslaughter regarding the deaths of her two children: four-year-old Hodascia Cadogan and one-year-old Jabari Cadogan, following a trial before Justice Navindra Singh in 2018. She had fed the children rat poison (aluminum phosphide tablets) on March 27, 2014 at their East Coast Demerara home.
On the first count, for the killing of Hodascia Cadogan, Rutherford had been sentenced to 45 years in jail; while on the second count, for the killing of Jabari Cadogan, she had been sentenced to 53 years’ imprisonment. The prison terms were to be served consecutively, meaning that her cumulative sentence was 98 years, and she was not eligible for parole.

On appeal, Rutherford had claimed, via her lawyer Dexter Smartt, that the Judge presiding over her trial had neglected to consider the voluntariness of the self-incriminating statements (caution statements) the Police said she had made. She had also argued that the 98-year prison term she had received was excessive and not in keeping with established sentencing guidelines.
A ruling on voluntariness is a “condition precedent” that must be fulfilled before any caution statement is admitted into evidence, Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag), Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, noted while reading the court’s ruling on Wednesday.

She did, however, point out that any jury given the right instructions would have found Rutherford guilty of the charges, given the prosecution’s evidence, which was sufficiently convincing even without the caution statements.
In light of this, the Chancellor stated, the trial Judge’s failure to make a decision about the voluntariness of the caution statements posed no actual risk of injustice to Rutherford.

Re-sentence
The Court of Appeal chose to re-sentence Rutherford, after concluding that the trial court’s sentence was excessively severe. In doing so, it took into account the totality principle, the fact that Rutherford was 25 years old at the time of the crimes, the relevant case laws, and the fact that the offences were the result of comparable circumstances.
The court started Rutherford’s sentence at 35 years, deducting two years for her “genuine remorse” and an additional three years for her favourable probation report, leaving 30 years.
As a result, the woman received concurrent terms of 30 years in jail for each of the two charges.
Before she is eligible for parole, Rutherford must spend 20 years behind bars.
The State was represented by Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, Teshana Lake. Judges Dawn Gregory-Barnes and Rishi Persaud of the Court of Appeal also deliberated on this matter.

At the hearing of Rutherford’s appeal earlier this year, Lake had submitted 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 had agreed with the defence counsel’s argument that the 98 years’ sentence was disproportionate and excessive.
During the woman’s trial in 2018, the State had adduced evidence that she had given each of her children half of a tablet of aluminum 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.
Rutherford had been hospitalised for seven days after the poisoning of her offspring, after she had drunk two rat poison tablets after giving the same to her children.
The children’s cause of death was listed as pesticide poisoning.
“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, 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.”