Delivered fatal stab while defending herself
JUSTICE James Bovell-Drakes, the presiding judge in the Alexander Village manslaughter trial, yesterday ruled that accused Erica Fredericks, 25, was being brutalised by her jealous 25-year-old husband, Keon Adolphus, now dead, when she grabbed a nearby knife and made the fatal stab.

A freed Erica Fredericks and her mother embrace each other as they leave the Court.

The judge delivered his ruling by accepting a defence no-case submission by Attorney-at-law Mr. Mark Waldron, who at the close of the prosecution’s case had submitted that the State had failed to produce a prima facie case for his client to answer and urged the judge to free the accused at that stage without calling on her for a defence.

The jury was sent out of sight and hearing to permit a voir dire (a trial within a trial) to take place during which the law as related to the case was discussed by the judge and the lawyers involved.

Prosecutor Miss Zamilla Alli had, in her opening address at the original trial, set out to prove that the accused had used more force than was necessary. But according to the evidence led by the star witness for the prosecution, he supported the story as told by the accused who said that she had attended a concert on the night of November 17, 2007, and had returned home on the morning of the 18th, when her boyfriend, now deceased, received her with blows and would stop only to start the beating again. The star witness Orlando Williams testified that he spoke to the deceased telling him to stop the beating but he continued to cuff and slap the accused until she was bleeding from the mouth.

According to the witness, the accused at one stage pelted the deceased with a knife but missed her. Keon was in the process of beating her when she grabbed a knife and stabbed him. Keon fell and the accused expressed sorrow at what had happened and took him to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

In his ruling yesterday, the judge said that from a review of the evidence, it appears that the deceased had no intention to injure the deceased, but for her, it was the relentless onslaught that caused her to hit out in defence.

The judge commended defence counsel Waldron for his conduct of the case. He told Prosecutor Zamilla Alli that she had done well but could not make blood out of stones.