Deliberations set to begin in Hutt murder trial
Posted Jun 6, 2013 06:19:27 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA, Ont. – Jury deliberations in the murder trial of Mark Hutt will begin Thursday.
The Crown finished closing arguments Wednesday in its case against the man accused of scalding his wife and leaving her to die from her burns.
Hutt has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the 2009 death of Donna Jones. She died from septic shock 12 days after she was drenched by a pot of boiling water.
Hutt told police he had been preparing a spaghetti dinner, and accidentally spilled the pot on his wife.
But the Crown argues, it was all part of Hutt’s disturbing plan. Crown prosecutor Vikki Bair argued that Hutt could have saved Jones, but chose not to — instead, watching her suffer in agony for 12 days on the floor of the basement, until she finally succumbed to her injuries.
The Crown alleges the violence didn’t stop – that as she lay helpless, Hutt continued to torture Jones by kicking her, breaking her nose and by firing lead pellets into her body.
Hutt, who has shaved the sides of his head for closing arguments, stared vacantly ahead in the prisoners’ box as he listened to the Crown paint a picture of a disturbing, abusive marriage with Jones.
The Crown says in the four years the couple knew each other, Hutt isolated his wife from her family and friends and sucked her bank account dry, by forcing her to buy him “toys” like a snowmobile.
Bair said Hutt wanted his wife to die because he had, “already taken everything she had to give.”
