Jurors asked to make sexual distinction in Peter King case

The jurors trying 25-year-old Sheldon Pusey, who is charged with the murder of 64-year-old Ambassador Peter King, were asked yesterday to make a distinction between a man making sexual approaches to the average homosexual and a similar approach to a heterosexual. Caroline Hay, deputy director of public prosecutions, during her address, asked the jury to make the distinction.


offended

Hay said the average heterosexual man would be offended if another man approached him seeking to be intimate with him, while the average homosexual man might not be offended and could regard it as a compliment.

Hay said Pusey chose to go to Kings' house with a ganja spliff, which he said he smoked while he was there. She said Pusey might have regarded it as a compliment when King approached him and would not have been offended that he was having an affaire with Ambassador Peter King, who was a "big man" in the society. Hay told the jurors that if they found that Pusey was gay, then they would have to apply that reasoning.


shorts and socks

The jurors were also asked to bear in mind that the prosecution's witnesses said that Pusey was dressed in shorts and socks when they saw him with King in the kitchen downstairs.

"He picked up himself and went into the man's bedroom and was in there watching television for one and a half hours," Hay said. She pointed out that Pusey must have been gay to do such a thing.


evidence

Hay referred to the evidence of the doctor who examined Pusey one year after the incident. She said the doctor said he had not seen any recent sexual penetration but the doctor could not to say if Pusey was gay. She asked the jury to find that from the severe injuries found on King's body, that Pusey had intended to kill him.

King was fatally stabbed and chopped at his home at 11A Waterloo Road, St Andrew, between March 19 and 20, 2006. Pusey, who is being represented by defence lawyer Berry Bryan, said in his defence, that King attempted to rape him and Pusey took a knife and stabbed him.