‘Don’t let anybody tek you fi a fool’

The attorney for the policeman accused of killing popular social media personality and entrepreneur Donna-Lee Donaldson argued yesterday that several pieces of evidence in the case were “unreliable” before delivering a very pointed appeal to the seven-member jury.

Donaldson was last seen alive on July 11, 2022, when she was picked up at her home, in St Andrew, by Constable Noel Maitland, her boyfriend of three years, according to the testimony of her mother, Sophia Lugg.

Maitland is on trial for murder and preventing the lawful burial of a corpse.

Prosecutors, who have largely relied on circumstantial evidence, likened the case to a jigsaw puzzle during their closing arguments on Monday, telling jurors that they were simply connecting the pieces.

However, during his final pitch to jurors, Maitland’s attorney, Christopher Townsend, described the police investigation as “bad” and “half-done” and warned jurors “don’t let anybody tek you fi a fool”.

Townsend also took a shot at the prosecution’s closing arguments, arguing that they were “grabbing at straws, they are drowning” because “all their witnesses are shooting themselves in the foot”.

CLOSING ARGUMENT

“If the puzzle don’t fit, you must acquit,” he repeatedly told jurors during his near-90-minute closing argument in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston.

“You must say, by your verdict, whether this hodge-podge investigation, this hodge-podge case, can fly,” he said.

Justice Leighton Pusey, the judge presiding over the closely watched eight-month-long trial, began his summation to the seven-member jury yesterday, and a verdict could come by Thursday.

Townsend, a top criminal defence attorney, argued that the case against Maitland was “full of possibilities”.

“And once it is full of possibilities, that is the death of circumstantial evidence,” the attorney asserted.

He reminded jurors that they must feel sure of the policeman’s guilt, noting that the case should be resolved in Maitland’s favour if they were unsure.

“If you say, ‘You know, me nuh think him do it, enuh, but him probably know ‘bout it’. That’s a not guilty. You have to feel sure that he committed the offence,” he said.

“Why should we send an innocent man to prison? Why, on this evidence?” the attorney questioned.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com