GH - AMLALO v. THE REPUBLIC

JUDGMENT OF ANIN J.A.

Anin J.A. delivered the judgment of the court. The villagers of Ekeyeamezor near Axim woke up in the morning of 8 September 1974 to discover pilfering among their backyard poultry. Not unnaturally their suspicion fell on two persons, Avor Kojo and Kofi Takyi, who had acquired considerable notoriety in that little community for stealing poultry. On this occasion, the real evidence of an abandoned trap and chicken feathers strewn higgledy-piggledy in a compound convinced the simple village-folk of the stealthy nocturnal trapping of their fowl and the clandestine consumption of the booty by the suspects. Upon the discovery of the theft, the appellant and his brother Kofi Ahele lost no time in challenging and quarrelling with Kofi Takyi and Avor Kojo respectively.

In the trial at the Sekondi High Court, the prosecution relied on the evidence of two persons who claimed to be eye-witnesses of this quarrel. The first witness, Samuel Quarm, described how the appellant and his brother openly accused Kofi Takyi and Avor Kojo of theft and then insisted that they produce the missing fowl or else face the consequences. On being rebuffed by the suspects' the appellant retrieved a trap from the suspects, house. Kofi Takyi immediately struggled with the appellant to snatch the trap from him; and this struggle escalated into a quarrel between the two of them. Simultaneously, the appellant's brother, Kofi Ahele, engaged the second suspect Avor Kojo in a fight. According to both prosecution witnesses, the appellant "cut Takyi's face with a cutlass and pushed him down and gave him another cut at the back of the neck." On being called by his step-mother, the appellant bolted away from the scene.

The testimony of the second eye-witness, Joseph Anoma Kwame, corroborated that of the first in all essentials; the only discrepancy being that while the first witness stated that the appellant at the commencement of the quarrel held a cutlass in his right hand; the second witness for his part swore to seeing the cutlass in the appellant's left hand. Both in the court below and in this court much capital was made by defence counsel about this discrepancy in the testimony of the two eye-witnesses. However, in the circumstances of this case we do not find this discrepancy to be material. The inescapable fact is that both witnesses swore to seeing the appellant slash his victim twice with the cutlass. Their accounts tallied, not only on the number of cuts inflicted

JUDGMENT OF ANIN J.A.

AMLALO v. THE REPUBLIC

Areas of Law

Judgement