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Death sentence for butcher who butchered wife
“May the Lord have mercy upon your soul”, the judge said in passing the death sentence after the jury’s unanimous guilty verdict. The case for the Prosecution was that the butcher believed his wife was having an affair with another man and had tried to enquire about the friendship but was beaten by his rival On
December 28, 2003, Barth, the jury was told, decided to take matters
into his own hands after accusing his wife of sleeping out the night
before and returning that morning in a mini-bus with her lover. According
to witnesses, the husband noted that instead of repenting, his wife told
him he was no longer a fit sexual partner, and that she had to seek
another man. Police
said he beat her on the head with a rolling pin and after she fell semi-
conscious, he slit her throat with a knife, chopped off both her hands,
leaving one on the bed and the other near her body, in a pool of blood
on the floor. The court was told he then slashed her abdomen causing her intestines to protrude.
Barth,
represented by Attorney-at-law Peter Hugh, pleaded not guilty, claiming
he was an epileptic, and after his wife hit him on the head that day
following an argument, he became dazed and did not know what happened
afterwards. Hugh
argued that the butcher was not the master of his mind that day and
therefore could not form the intention to kill -- one of the ingredients
to establish the offence of murder. But
Prosecutor Leron Daly, referring to the wounds and how these were
inflicted, declared, “As a butcher, and accustomed to slaughtering
cows and pigs and other animals, perhaps he mistook the bedroom that day
for a slaughter house.” Responding
to the defence counsel’s claim that Barth did not intend to kill and
that he was not the master of his mind, Prosecutor Daly asked, “if he
did not have an intention to kill, why is it that he was walking with a
knife in his waist? He had the knife there with the intention to kill.
He not only had the intention to kill but he also had the intention to
end his own life by drinking kerosene…but things turned out
differently.” Justice
Cummings-Edwards summed up the evidence in two-and-a-half hours and the
mixed jury took two hours to reach the unanimous verdict.
day,
November 01, 2006
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