By Elesha George
“Where’s the proof?” Joanna Finch asked, questioning why the prosecution accepted a plea of manslaughter based on diminished responsibility from the woman who killed her sister.
Brittany Jno-Baptiste, 24, was initially charged with murder for the killing of Wendy Jane Finch on October 4, 2021. Last week, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter, claiming she wasn’t fully responsible due to being under the influence of marijuana and experiencing hallucinations. Justice Tunde Bakre accepted the plea, with the prosecution supporting it.
Joanna, Wendy’s sister, said the family is upset and is submitting statements to register their dissatisfaction with the plea. “We want to see the highest level of punishment,” Joanna said. The family would like the diminished responsibility clause to be “erased” from the charge. “We don’t believe that she had diminished responsibility.”
Jane was killed in her Piccadilly home, located in the parish St Paul. Jno-Baptiste reportedly became enraged when Jane refused her request to use her phone late that night. During her statement, Jno-Baptiste admitted to being under the influence of marijuana at the time, claiming she was “not in [her] right head” and experiencing hallucinations of “ghosts and jumbies”.
A key element in the case was a 2022 assessment by clinical and forensic psychologist Dr James King. After interviewing Jno-Baptiste’s mother and sister, he determined that Jno-Baptiste suffered from cannabis-related disorders, which contributed to his recommendation for the diminished responsibility plea.
However, Joanna contends that Dr King’s assessment, conducted three months after the murder, should not be the foundation for the plea. “It’s the diminished responsibility charge that really upset us because none of us right from the beginning could ever believe that anything to do with marijuana would cause anybody to go into such a rage,” she said.
“We are all writing victim impact statements to explain our relationship with our sister,” she added, hoping that it will influence Jno-Baptiste’s sentencing.
Jno-Baptiste is scheduled for sentencing on February 10. During the trial, she apologized to the family, but Joanna said they won’t accept it. “We don’t accept it at all, none of us do. That’s just so easy [to say] … three years later when she’s got no feeling of what she did, no sense of who Jane was, no sense of the gravity of this horrible, brutal crime.
“If she’s sorry, it’s way too late,” she added. “Why did she do it in the first place? We’re not going to give up until we’re satisfied that she’s getting the strongest punishment possible.”
Jeffrey Finch, Jane and Joanna’s brother, also spoke out. “We’re confused… we waited for three years,” he said. “It was a very clear-cut incident of unmitigated violence and brutal, brutal violence. She was caught red-handed. We don’t understand how, in a situation like this, there could be any sort of diminished responsibility.”
Both he and Joanna described the plea as an “excuse” to divert attention from the fact that Brittany deliberately and brutally killed their sister. “She knew what she did. She admitted it … whatever her mental state was is beside the point.”
“We don’t know if any of this is true,” Jeffrey remarked, referring to reports from Brittany’s mother and sister claiming she had issues before the killing, including early-diagnosed dyslexia and bullying in school for being slow. “There’s been no conversation with her teachers,” Joanna noted.
Jeffrey added, “Dr King has no history with her. It’s all hearsay at this point.”
