By Grace Q. Bryant
Investigator Nathaniel Sieh Hodge says crime must have malice but that was not established in the case of Charloe’s murder.
Testifying as defense’s expert witness yesterday in court, he said the Police investigation failed to report the motive instead, the charge sheet talked about Criminal Conspiracy.
“In my professional understanding, there must be a motive for these people to conspire; as a matter of fact, there is no crime without a motive, there has to be malice aforethought, it is not established by the Police Investigative Report, then the question would be also, who organized this conspiracy? Why did they conspire to commit such heinous crime (murder)?” he testified.
“I read the Police charge sheet, I read other statements made, there is no indication whatsoever to inform this court and the jury that there was any bad relationship between the dead person and those that are being charged with murder,” he narrated.
According to him, he talked with several persons from within the neighborhood to find out if they knew of any bad relationship between the late Charloe and her family members, and there was no information available to such, “So what would cause four persons, including somebody who is in her 80s, to commit a murder of a family person?” he explained.
“Then, of course, I searched the Police records and there is nothing called or identified as the murder weapon, except that Police believes the murder was carried on by stabbing with a weapon believed to be a knife. Yet, these people are charged with murder. According to the Police report, there was no intruder into the premises, forgetting to know that we have different types of criminals, with different expertise and styles,” he testified.
He added, “It tells me that the Police want to keep these people charged under circumstantial evidence as basis, because according to them, if nobody else was found, then those that were found in the home are to be liable for the murder,” he noted.
“I got to criminalistics applied by the Police, and according to them, in part of the Police report, it is found that they found blood stains all over the house, but they were able to lift blood from the floor, analyze it, and it was proven that the blood is from only female, they talked about finding blood during their search in the bathroom attached to the guest room, according to them, they saw blood stains in the face basin, they saw blood stains on the firestone bricks, they saw blood stains from the window and also on a towel, and according to them, when you show the towel under the light, you will see that blood stain is on it, but they did not analyze any of them,” he explained.
He noted that the claim that they came across a torn bride, which shows indication that there was a tussle between a female and somebody, but the bride was not analyzed; those questions also the application of criminalistics, because we use crime analysis to help the Police, and the Court reached final determination of a trial; in other words, they fell short.
“I should also like to bring to the attention of this Court that in this modern world of high-class crimes, it is also important to apply forensic psychology; in other words, to evaluate the mental state of those that you hold as criminal suspects. For example, they could have taken any of these four persons to a licensed psychologist or psychiatric to test the mental state of these people, if they were sound or sick, for which they had to kill their own daughter,” he continued.
According to expert Hodge, while reading through witnesses’ testimonies, he got informed that a security guard called Zion Tarr was one of those who first went to the rescue those that were entrapped in the house, and he used a cutlass to cut steel bars from the window.
“I would like to tell this Court that it is not possible to use a cutlass to cut any of those steel bars that were used to protect the window; if such a cutlass was used, the entire blade of the cutlass would be broken, and it is in fact not possible,” he emphasized.
He noted that after opening the doors, several persons from the neighborhood, including one Nigerian national called Christian Okonwo, entered the yard after the door was opened; he entered the house subsequently, and within that period of those many persons, if an intruder was in the house, they would have exited to flee the scene.
He further explained that prior to being employed in the LNP as a Police officer, he spent six months at the National Police Training Academy, then referred to as the National Public Safety Institute, for six months, and he gained several advance trainings, including crowd riot and disaster management control; he also specialized as an accident investigator.
“To add, I got trained as a Criminal Investigator, and, upon going to the National Security Agency, I obtained training in special and several intelligence areas, including, and not limited to, counter terrorism, money laundering, and terrorist financing,” he explained.
