Ashley Newbold, accused of the 1996 shooting death of Joyanne Cartwright, then Club 601 manager, was sentenced to death in the Supreme Court yesterday.
After listening to Justice Ricardo Marques’ summation and direction, the jury of nine women and three men, retired, returning after three hours of deliberation with a unanimous guilty verdict.
As jurors entered the sound of shuffling paper stopped and a deeper silence fell on the courtroom.
Newbold, who had remained calm through the week long trial showed no emotion when the verdict was read.
Justice Marques in his direction to the jurors told them not to be sidetracked by “irrelevant issues” revealed during the trial, but to focus on the real matters of concern.
He told jurors that if they agreed with and believed the only evidence of the court, which was a written statement by Newbold, given to police on June 3-4, 2001, they should have regard to its entire contents and not disregard any protion of it.
He said that if someone is present at the scene of a crime with another, the person who did the shooting and their cohort should be “equally as guilty”.
The high profile case stirred much speculation and launched numerous allegations throughout its course. Many well known persons attended the hearings.
Many family, friends and well-wishers of Ms. Cartwright were in court yesterday. Also present was former police commissioner Bernard K. Bonamy, who has been present throughout the trial.
After a five year probe, Ashley Newbold, 29, was charged with Ms. Cartwright’s death on December 21, 2001.
Police reports allege that Newbold, on Friday, December 20, 1996, being concerned with another, muredered Ms. Cartwright.
Ms. Cartwright, who was 24, was shot several times at her Sea Beach estates condominium at the western end of New Providence.
Her cause of death was listed as gun shot wounds to the chest, abdomen, right forearm and neck. She received massive injuries to major body organs, including her heart, lungs, aorta and liver.
Outside court, Wilson Culmer Sr., father of Ms. Cartwright, and a local minister, said he does “not feel anything toward the parties involved” in his daughter’s murder. He believed “the Lord had his way.”
Mr. Culmer said he is satisfied police have regarded the case as ongoing because Newbold, according to the charge, “was concerned with another, which means that someone else should be sought and charged.”
Newbold left the court and entered Bank Lane, under police guard, suffering none of the usual verbal abuse that convicted people often experience from victim’s loved ones.
Leading defence attorney, Kenneth Foulkes said that “the jury made a decision, they heard the evidence and we presented the defence case as we were instructed, and we will now have to consider the position on appeal, but for now we have to respect the jury’s decision.”
Mr. Toppin refused to comment on police statements during the investigation into the case and the possibility of a second person being charged.
By Danielle Stubbs, The Tribune
