A VERY elated Mark Major walked unshackled out of the High Court a free man on Monday afternoon after a 12-member jury found him not guilty of the murder of his first cousin, Orin Forde, on January 6, 2012.The charge had alleged that on January 12, 2012, at a slaughterhouse at Helena #1, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara, Mark Major murdered Orin Forde.

After a few hours of deliberation Monday, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict and Madam Justice Roxane George told the accused, “Mr Major, you are free to go.”

Amidst cries of joy and relief, Major’s relatives embraced him and led him out of the courtroom.

Major, a slaughterhouse employee, alleged that following an argument over money his cousin had borrowed from him, his cousin had attacked him with an axe handle, causing him to arm himself with a knife. Forde allegedly died as a result of injuries sustained in that encounter.

During the trial before Justice Roxane George and a mixed jury, it was related that $6,000 lent by one cousin to another in a verbal agreement eventually resulted in murder. The alleged money lender was Mark Major, who contended that his cousin agreed verbally to repay the debt with interest, amounting to a grand total of $10,000, but had repaid only $5,000 in total.

State Prosecutor Shawnette Austin, in association with Orinthia Schmidt and Tamieka Clarke, told the jury in her opening address that the killing was neither an accident nor provocation, but was intentional. She said the evidence indicated that what had happened that day did not occur in self-defence.

She had called 15 witnesses to testify from the witness box, and had said: “They [witnesses] will tell you a story that the accused, Mark Major, and the deceased, Orin Forde, were cousins; and that on the 6th of January, 2012, the deceased and the accused had an argument over money.”

Defence lawyers Clevaun Humphrey and Jermaine Jarvis premised their case on self-defence

(Michel Outridge)