KINGSTON, Jamaica –The Court, a short while ago, ruled that businessman Steven Causewell has a case to answer in relation to the 2008 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Nordia Mitchell, at her Oaklands apartment in St Andrew.

Causewell’s defence team on Monday brought a no-case submission in the Home Circuit Court, where the defendant is on trial for Mitchell’s murder.

Lead defence attorney Jacqueline Samuels Brown asked the judge to dismiss the matter, saying that the prosecution had not made out a prima facie case of murder, and has not provided sufficient evidence to support its claim that the businessman had murdered Mitchell.

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn told the judge that there was sufficient evidence presented for the jury to determine whether or not the accused had murdered his ex-girlfriend.

She also argued that the seven-member jury should be allowed to determine the “strength or weakness” of the case.

“The evidential fact [indicated] that the accused was the last person to see Miss Mitchell,” she said. The accused, she told the Court, had a motive, which was jealousy, because of Mitchell’s new lover, at whose home she had spent the last week of her life.

The DPP, who conceded that the evidence in the case was circumstantial, said the jury should be allowed to decide what it makes of all that had been presented.

She noted that there have been evidence before the court that at the time of Mitchell’s death, she was in a sexual relationship with another man who was known by Causewell, and that when Causewell went to her home on the night of her death he was in a negative mood, resulting in him ordering Mitchell’s female friend to leave.

Llewellyn said, too, that there was also evidence from the friend that she heard Causewell arguing with Mitchell in a lewd manner about whether she was sleeping with her new lover.

Tanesha Mundle