The jury at a Halifax murder trial spent Friday rehearing about six hours of evidence from a key Crown witness as part of its deliberations.
Calvin Maynard Sparks, 26, of Dartmouth and Samanda Rose Ritch, 22, of Halifax are charged with first-degree murder in the June 16, 2017, stabbing death of Nadia Gonzales at a Dartmouth apartment building.
They’re also accused of attempting to murder John Patterson, a Hants County senior who accompanied Gonzales to the building at 33 Hastings Dr. in Dartmouth that evening to deliver crack cocaine to a tenant.
The trial got underway Nov. 4 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The jury began deliberating Thursday after receiving final instructions from Christa Brothers.
The jury came back with two questions for the judge Thursday, including a request to listen to the court recording of Patterson’s direct testimony about what happened at the apartment building that night.
On Friday, the judge informed jurors they would also have to listen to the evidence elicited from Patterson on cross-examination by defence lawyers.
The replay included Patterson’s testimony about his experiences with Jacob Sparks and Frankie Tynes, two men involved in the illegal drug trade in Dartmouth whose names were brought up throughout the trial.
Jurors also got the judge to repeat her instructions about planning and deliberation, an essential element of first-degree murder.
Brothers sent the jury to a hotel shortly after 6 p.m. Deliberations will resume Saturday.
Patterson testified last month that Calvin Sparks and Ritch came out of Wayne (Batman) Bruce’s fourth-floor apartment after Gonzales knocked on the door. He said Sparks knocked Gonzales down with a strike to the head and began stabbing her.
Patterson said he was attacked after trying to pull Sparks off Gonzales from behind. He said he remembers seeing Ritch down on the floor with Gonzales and making stabbing motions but couldn’t say for sure that she had a knife.
Gonzales, 35, of Hammonds Plains, was stabbed upwards of 40 times and placed in a hockey bag that was discovered on a landing in the building’s west stairwell. Patterson, who suffered six stab wounds, made his way out of the building and collapsed on the lawn of a school across the street.
Sparks and Ritch were arrested in Halifax the next morning. Both had fresh cuts on their hands.
Ritch subsequently shared details of the killing with an undercover female officer in cells at the Halifax police station.
The undercover officer testified that Ritch said her ex had stabbed a girl about 30 times and put her in a duffel bag. Ritch allegedly told the officer she didn’t stab the girl but helped put her in the bag and that the girl had scratched her face.
Ritch allegedly also stated that her ex had stabbed her in the left ring finger during the incident.
A knife with Sparks’ and Gonzales’ DNA on it was found in the backyard of a Hastings Drive property. There was a broken knife in the hockey bag with the body, and a piece of the blade was in the fourth-floor hallway.
A DNA expert told the court that Sparks’ blood was also found, among other places, on clothing and one of the shoes worn by Gonzales, on the hockey bag and in the stairwell. Ritch’s DNA turned up in fingernail clippings taken from Gonzales’ right hand.
In his closing submissions, prosecutor Rob Kennedy said Sparks wanted to kill Gonzales because he was jealous of her financial success as a drug dealer, thought she was a police informant and couldn’t tolerate her calling him a rat.
Malcolm Jeffcock, Sparks’ lawyer, argued the case was based on police tunnel vision and unreliable witnesses and should leave the jury with reasonable doubt about the accused’s guilt.
Jacob Sparks and two other men were arrested in a nearby parking lot more than two hours after the killing but were released the next morning and never charged. Jeffcock raised the possibility that one of them was the source of an unknown male’s DNA found on Gonzales’ fingernails.
Jeffcock said someone else was responsible for the attack and that the hand injuries suffered by Calvin Sparks and Ritch were consistent with defensive wounds.. Sparks would have been bleeding profusely, he said, causing his DNA to be spread “hither and yonder.”
Peter Planetta, Ritch’s lawyer, said his client acted as an accessory after the fact but should be found not guilty on the charges before the court.
