Justice Winston Patterson yesterday upheld no-case submissions made by Attorney-at-Law Mursaline Bacchus and freed a Berbice man who was charged with murder following the cyanide poisoning of his pregnant sister-in-law.
Kemraj Gopaul called ‘Buddy’ walked free yesterday after Justice Patterson upheld the submissions made by the defence in the absence of the jury and then later directed the mixed jury at the Berbice Assizes to formally return a not-guilty verdict.
It was alleged that Gopaul had sent a box of juice laced with cyanide for his then three-year-old son, but his pregnant sister-in-law, Neto Singh, sipped it instead and subsequently fell ill and died.
Addressing Gopaul yesterday, Justice Patterson said, “You like all of us have a conscience and you are guided by it. Heavens knows what happened, Buddy. Have a nice day. You are discharged.”
Gopaul quickly exited the dock, reuniting with his relatives in the corridor of the court before leaving the building with them.
However, relatives of the 18-year-old Singh, who died along with a full-term female foetus, were overcome with grief and wept bitterly.
Justice Patterson, prior to his ruling said, “It’s a travesty. Witnesses must give evidence in a truthful manner. The more I peruse the witnesses’ evidence, the more I prove that there seems to be some measure of deliberateness.”
According to the judge, the state was relying on a case of transfer of malice, but while the state had to establish that the deceased died as a result of cyanide poisoning, it also had to prove that the accused knew that the juice was laced with the poison.
Justice Patterson said the pathologist did not certify the death of Singh nor was there a nexus between what was removed from the corpse and what was analyzed.
The judge noted that police witness Leslie Junior had testified that the body sample was placed in a white bottle with a red cork marked LJ51BD, while analyst Stephen Greaves said he examined the contents from a red and white bottle marked LJ52BD.
Questioned, Junior explained that he got mixed up with another exhibit of a similar nature.
“That tells volumes,” the judge remarked, while adding that there were several instances where the evidence was destroyed in cross-examination.
Civilian witness Devi Singh had testified that the juice box was multi-coloured but the colour pink was highlighted more. However, another witness Roslyn Lepps informed the court that the main colours of the drink box were yellow, white and green. She maintained that the colour pink was not featured.
“The case is so devoid of potent evidence that one wonders what was going on. I am not going to blame the police entirely, nor cast total blame on the other witnesses,” Justice Patterson said.
The judge said there was a possibility that the exhibits got mixed up and while the analyst was honest, there seemed to be some game being played somewhere. One policeman had said that the box was sealed, while another said it was not.
“Imagine two lives are gone,” Justice Patterson lamented. “How can a case of this nature get so mixed up? The doctor admitted that he was not a toxicologist, but was convinced that the death was due to cyanide, but procedurally he had to wait until he received the analyst’s report to confirm same.”
The items were sent to be analyzed on August 18, 2005 but were not uplifted until December 5, 2005.
The prosecution’s case as presented by State Counsel Donelle Mc Cammon was that on August 17, 2005, Devi and Priya Singh, sisters of the deceased, went to Aussie King’s Shop in Mount Sinai, West Canje Berbice. While there they saw Gopaul, who gave Priya a Motorola cell phone, along with a charger and instructed her to give them to another of her siblings, Devika. He then gave her a box of juice and requested that it be given to his then three-year-old son Rajendra Singh.
On leaving the shop, Priya and Devi stopped at their grandfather’s residence, where they saw their father and requested that he read the expiration date on the juice box. Their sister Neto, on seeing the box of juice took it, sipped of its contents and then began complaining of pain in the throat. She requested a drink of water prior to being taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital where she succumbed.
In his post-mortem report, Dr Vivikanand Brijmohan observed that the mouth of the deceased smelt like bitter almonds. In addition, he said, the stomach was filled with undigested food material with an intense reddish colour, while in the generative organ there was a full-term dead female foetus.
The forensic pathologist also indicated that body specimens: the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, gall bladder and kidney were sent to be analyzed and the results of the samples tested positive for cyanide.