NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Court of Appeal has upheld the murder conviction and affirmed the 42-year prison sentence of a Jamaican woman accused of killing her girlfriend back in 2021.
Nadisha Beckford, 35, alias Shaneda Beckford aka Star, was unanimously convicted by a jury on October 18th, 2022 of the February 2021 murder of 31-year-old Lakeisha Mackey. According to the evidence presented at the trial, Beckford stabbed Mackey with a knife during an altercation in the parking lot of the Mayfair Hotel, West Bay Street on Saturday, February 20th, 2021. Mackey died in hospital two days later.
Beckford appealed her conviction on the basis that the trial judge had erred in exercising her discretion in admitting an audio recording of a conversation between herself (Beckford) and Lakeria Mott, one of the witnesses in the trial, shortly after the altercation and that the judge’s direction to the jury on self defense and circumstantial evidence was insufficient. Beckford also appealed her prison sentence on the basis that was unduly severe.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal noted: “With respect to the admission into evidence of the audio recording, it cannot be said that the audio recording had no probative value and its contents were irrelevant to the issues in the case. The appellant’s defense was one of self defense. There was no evidence from which a jury could discern a basis for the argument of self-defense otherwise than from the audio recording.”
“The audio recording was the only bit of evidence that could remotely support the defense of self-defense. It is, therefore, difficult to see how it was in the interest of the appellant to exclude the audio recording if she was relying on self defense.”
The ruling continued: “The Court is satisfied with the Judge’s direction on self-defense. Indeed, it was more helpful to the appellant as it referred to a statement about self-defense that the appellant was supposed to have said in her record of interview when no such statement was, in fact, made by her. In our view, the Judge’s direction on circumstantial evidence was balanced and fair. The Court does not find that the sentence given by the trial Judge was unduly severe.”
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