At Demerara Assizes…
JUSTICE Roxanne George yesterday began conducting a voir dire (trial within a trial), in the absence of the jury, to determine the admissibility of a deposition by Rhea Rodney, sister of the victim in a murder case at the Demerara Assizes. State Prosecutor Latchmie Rahamat was attempting to tender the attestation of the deponent who is out of the jurisdiction when Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos, for the Defence, took objection.
De Santos, representing the accused, Lennox Syfox, objected to its admission, on the ground that it is more prejudicial than probative.
The smaller trial will continue on Monday, with Syfox indicted for the unlawful killing of Roslyn Rodney, the mother of his children, at Golden Grove, East Coast Demerara, on August 19, 2005.
The eight months old daughter of the victim, Analisa was also wounded and Syfox is also being tried for unlawfully wounding the child.
A witness for the Prosecution, Pauline Rodney, on Thursday, denied a Defence suggestion that she was responsible for the death of her daughter.
The woman was under cross-examination when she testified that Roslyn was at home in Golden Grove on the night of the tragedy. She said the accused attacked her daughter with a silver knife and wounded her on the face, neck and left arm.
She said the woman was holding the baby at the time and the infant was also injured.
In answer to De Santos, she said she was angry when she saw the accused, whom she had stopped from visiting her home since 2003, on her property.
But she denied a suggestion that it was because of that anger she armed herself with a knife and ordered the accused out of the house.
She said she did not have any knife brandishing at the accused, causing him to make a mad scramble for it and resulting in she, herself, being cut with it.
She also said it was not true that her daughter was behind her with the child and was injured when she intervened in a struggle for the weapon between the accused and Pauline Rodney.