Loving Domesticity

"There's too many injuries on her. There's too much damage. She's a hurt woman. The damage that's done to her over the last series of years is unbelievable. I've never seen it in my life. It's not something you can explain away."
Ottawa Police Sgt. Mike Hudson

Donna Jones had been married two years of her 32-year-old life when she was found dead on December 9, 2009 in the basement of her home, her body in rigor mortis, seeping with infections, lying on an old mattress. When she was found it could be immediately seen that she had a broken nose, two black eyes and burns on half of her body. These injuries, old and new alike all resulted from accidents. Donna Jones was accident prone.

This is a fact. It is a known fact because her husband has steadfastly informed police and court during his first-degree murder trial, that this was an unfortunate fact, one that would explain much about the injuries she sustained. During an interview a scant five days after her death, Donna's husband Mark Hutt was asked by the interviewing detective, "Did you ever tie her to a tree?"

The video of that interview was played in court. "God, no. No, no, no", responded a shocked Mark Hutt. He was drunk, aimed at a bottle the night he accidentally shot her with his rifle-type pellet gun. X-rays of Donna Jones's body had revealed broken ribs and bones and almost 30 pellets still resident in her body. This revelation was given to Mark Hutt when he was arrested for causing her death.

In his first interview the day of her death, he was considered a "grieving husband". The second interview was far, far different. He admitted to another accident, this one when he inadvertently happened to pour boiling water all over his wife. And the reason he chose not to seek medical help for her was because she insisted she was fine. Two weeks later he did dial 911, and by then he had discovered that her breathing had stopped.

"I thought I was doing well by respecting her wishes. It's my stupidity. I should have listened to myself, but I didn't. I should have never listened to her." The man is guilty of stupidity, certainly not guilty of murder. Although he caused the accident, it was her fault that no medical attention was given her, because she refused medical treatment. We know that, because her husband has testified to that little fact.

And that he could be accused of deliberately killing his wife is beyond his understanding. "I would understand criminal negligence, but that other word -- that's not me", he protested to Sgt. Hudson. Negligence due to the fact that he respected his wife's autonomy in decision making for herself, fine. Murder? Simply unbelievable, because he is not that kind of person. He wasn't a violent person. He once slapped his wife - once only - in self-defence.

Not his fault, that one slap. They'd had an argument, just one of those husband-wife things, and she slapped him. He responded. Only time. Never again. And he apologized immediately. The court has his word on it. He waxed eloquent about how he would recommend to his wife that she wear a helmet, because she was always and forever tripping over something; the vacuum cord, the dogs, down the stairs. Accident-prone.

"I don't want to say she was clumsy, but she didn't look where she was going." So there's the sound explanation for those broken ribs, broken bones, broken nose, black eyes. Oh yes, and the pellets lodged securely in her body. And he knew what grief and pain was himself, he did. "Push, shove, punch, kick, slap, throw. I had a rough life", he reminisced about his childhood beatings by his father and his mother's boyfriend.

Sgt. Hudson wasn't easily convinced. He just had it in for this poor bereaved husband; you could tell. "She's been lying for you for years. Every time you'd hurt her, she'd go to work and make up a f---ing lie about this bruise and that bruise, this injury and that injury. She changed the way she wore her hair. She put on makeup. Get it off your chest. This is your chance", Sgt. Hudson urged Hutt, trying to bully him, the poor guy, into a confession .