Decide verdict on evidence, judge tells jury in Ruddock murder trial

JUSTICE Leighton Pusey has implored the seven members of the jury in the Andre Ruddock murder trial not to arrive at a verdict based on anything they have heard outside of court, but, rather, to stick to the evidence. Pusey began his summation to the jury on Friday morning in the Home Circuit Court, downtown Kingston, after the prosecution and defence teams finished their cases and gave their closing addresses to the jury on Thursday. Pusey indicated from early that he would not be rushing his summation and spent a couple hours going over some of the evidence which was presented during the trial and gave the jurors instructions on how to approach their decision after some 10 witnesses testified during the trial which began in September. Ruddock is on trial for murder in relation to the October 17, 2021 killing of Taneka Gardner at Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries in St James. Gardner was killed in what is said to have been a human-sacrifice ritual and it is alleged that Ruddock cut her throat on instructions from the now-deceased Pastor Dr Kevin Smith. “Despite the fact that Mr Ruddock is here, he is presumed innocent. What this means is that you can’t take into consideration anything else that you may have heard or know of him, or anything that might be in terms of his circumstances. The only thing you look at is what has been said in court. “And what has been said in court must be sufficient to satisfy you that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before you can come to a verdict of guilt. In other words, he doesn’t have to prove to you that he didn’t do anything,” Pusey told the jurors. “He doesn’t have to prove to you that he is a good person. He doesn’t have to prove to you that he is a nice person or not. That does not matter. He is innocent like any other citizen in the country from anywhere else. And therefore, you cannot start a case with anything in terms of what you have heard or anything else. The only thing that you’re going to be looking at is the evidence and the evidence only,” Pusey warned. The judge emphasised that the accused has no requirement, no need in law, to prove that he did not do anything. “He’s been charged with murder and in law, we define murder as the unlawful killing of a person. And so, for the purposes of that definition of law, these are the things that you need to look at. You have to first come to the conclusion of whether the person was killed. “That is why you — not just the persons who say something — but you have a post-mortem and you also have seen, heard the evidence of the person who identified the body. So if you remember, you heard from Taneka Gardner’s father and he indicated that this is his daughter and he said that he identified the body and went to the post-mortem. So therefore, you have the evidence that Taneka Gardner died,” Pusey said. “But also, more importantly, you have the evidence of the doctor who did the post-mortem and he gave you in great detail exactly what happened to her and what caused her death. So, in this circumstance, you have clear evidence that somebody died and that person died from a cut to the throat. It was not an accidental death, or something like that. That she was killed by somebody who cut her throat. “The one question that you need to come to in this case is whether or not that particular person who killed her is in jail. As I said, it is not necessary for us to go through and try to find out all the things that happened on that day. Who did what. Who was good and who was bad. What we are trying to determine is whether or not Andre Ruddock was the person who killed Taneka Gardner,” added Pusey. The judge is expected to complete his summation on Monday, which will pave the way for the jurors to begin their deliberation and return a verdict.