JUSTICE Franklyn  Holder, presiding in the murder trial of  Odinga Greene, called ‘Dingo’,  yesterday, upheld a defence no-case submission and directed the mixed jury to return a formal verdict of ‘not guilty’ in favour of Odinga Greene. This followed a trial which lasted several days, and at which 15 witnesses testified — eight in a voir dire (a trial within a trial) and seven at the substantive trial.

Following closure of the State’s case last week, defence counsel Mr.  Nigel Hughes relied on no-case submissions in which he contended that the prosecution had failed to make out a prima facie case for his client to answer.

And he claimed that, because of lack of evidence, his client should be freed at this stage, without being called on for a defence.

On the other hand, State Prosecutors Mrs. Judith Mursalin and Miss Diana Kaulesar had submitted that the prosecution had made a case for the accused to answer. They pointed to the fact that the accused had invited out the deceased, Nazaleene Mohamed, telling her to wear all her jewels because where she was going she would have to look nice.

According to Prosecutor Mursalin, that advice by the accused was followed  by  the girl being found missing  after a drive by the accused  to Linden;  and her decomposed body subsequently being found in a shallow  grave in a Wisroc coal pit.

It was not by coincidence, the prosecutor said, that the accused was found to be offering jewels for sale; and had subsequently skipped the country for a year, culminating in him being returned to Guyanese authorities by the Suriname authorities.

The circumstances that followed Nazaleene Mohamed’s meeting with the accused and her death were  sufficient evidence to  provide a prima facie case,  the prosecutor said; but this did not find favour with the judge, who  directed the jury to free the accused.

Following the verdict, the judge told the accused that he was free to leave. The accused then rushed out of the dock like a man in a hurry, disappearing in a crowd outside of the court.
 A sister of the deceased, who was in court, tearfully resented the verdict, since she believed that the accused had been responsible for her sister’s death.     

Odinga Greene had been indicted for the murder of Nazaleene Mohamed between February 2nd and 12th, 2007.  Her mother had identified a decomposed female body which had been found in a shallow grave in a coal pit at Wisrock, Linden. Identification of that corpse had been based by the mother on a tattoo around the navel of her daughter.                               
She thinks that Odinga Greene had killed her daughter sometime between the 2nd and 12th of February, 2007.
 
The prosecution had said that it had the burden of proving the guilt of the accused in this matter; the accused does not have to prove his innocence. That is a long established principle of the legal system.

The story the prosecution had narrated was, that on the evening of February 2, 2007, the accused Odinga  Greene went to the home of the deceased Nazaleene Mohamed with a car, and picked  her  up along  with her friend. When Nazaleene left her home, she was wearing a large quantity of jewellery.

It is said that she had told her mother in the presence of the accused that, “Odinga had called her and had told her to put on all her jewellery, because she had to look nice where she was going.” The three of them were going to Cayenne.

The mother of the deceased never heard from her daughter again. The decomposing body of a female was found at Wisroc, partially buried in a shallow grave.

The doctor who performed the post-mortem on that body had told of carrying out an examination on a decomposed, unidentified body of a female, whom he said might have died of asphyxiation as a result of ‘ligature’ strangulation.

The accused had pleaded innocent.