By Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
Paul Gooden (2nd right) boards a police vehicle after he was convicted for the murder of his wife yesterday by a 12-member jury in the Home Circuit Court. - RUDOLPH BROWN/Chief Photographer
AFTER DELIBERATING for nearly four hours, a Home Circuit Court jury yesterday returned a guilty verdict against 39-year-old Paul Gooden for the murder of his wife, 36-year-old Ingrid Andrade-Gooden.
Gooden, a former distribution consultant at Yummy Bakery, Kingston, showed no signs of emotion even when the jury foreman announced the unanimous guilty verdict of non-capital murder. It came almost a year after his wife was killed.
Mrs. Justice Marva McIntosh has put off sentencing until tomorrow. "Thank God, justice has been done", said Glen Andrade, Q.C , retired Director of Public Prosecutions, and father of the deceased, in response to the verdict. He and his wife Ruby, an attorney-at-law and retired Registrar of Titles, gave evidence at the trial and attended court daily.
APPEAL
Gooden's lawyers, Lord Anthony Gifford, Q.C., Hugh Thompson, and Thalia Maragh said an appeal was being considered.
"He is not guilty," Gooden's mother Pat Gooden, a singer and musician who also kept a daily vigil at the trial, said. She said her son was not a violent person but was someone who preferred to reason things out rather than resort to anger. She was definite that there would be an appeal.
The sentence for non-capital murder is life imprisonment but the judge will have the power to recommend how many years Gooden should serve before he is eligible for parole.
Spectators who turned out in large numbers were impatient as they waited for the verdict. Some of them wondered aloud about the length of time the deliberations had been taking in what they felt should have been a simple "straightforward" decision. However, after the verdict was handed down, the majority could hardly contain themselves.
The jury deliberated from 11.14 a.m. to 3.10 p.m.
Kent Pantry, Q.C., Director of Public Prosecutions along with prosecutors David Fraser and Diahann Gordon-Harrison, led evidence at the trial which began on October 26. They successfully maintained that Gooden strangled his wife between November 6 and 7 last year at their home at Hartford Towers Apartment, 7 Sullivan Avenue, St. Andrew.
FACE MANGLED BEYOND RECOGNITION
The body, with the face mangled beyond recognition, was found at 7.30 a.m. in mangroves off the Norman Manley Highway, Kingston at 7.30 a..m. on November 8, last year. There were no eyewitnesses to the murder but the Crown relied on circumstantial evidence to prove its case. The Crown said the motives for the murder were jealousy, obsession and rejection.
Gooden, in his defence, had denied killing his wife -a former administrator at the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC). He maintained throughout the trial how much he loved his wife and would never have harmed her. The couple had been married for 12 years and had two children. Gooden said he last saw his wife alive when she left home at minutes to 6 a.m. on November 7, telling him that she was going to meet someone at the gate.
Several emails were tendered in evidence by the defence to suggest that Gooden's wife was involved in a love affair with a man she met on the internet.
