ATINGA MOSHIE ALIAS ADAMA v. THE REPUBLIC

JUDGMENT OF ARCHER J.A.

Archer J.A. delivered the judgment of the court. The appellant was employed as a farm labourer in Babianiha, near Dormaa-Ahenkro, in the Brong-Ahafo Region and he lived in the same house as his employer. One evening in April 1969, after helping his employer and his family in shelling groundnuts, the appellant retired to his room. Shortly afterward two women who had brought the groundnuts decided to return to their own houses. All of a sudden there was some sound as if someone had fallen down. The employer, Nuhu Moshie, then got up to see what had happened. Nuhu Moshie saw the appellant standing in front of his room holding a cutlass. The appellant then attempted to strike his employer with the cutlass, but the latter managed to grab the appellant and both fell down. However, the appellant succeeded in slashing the left wrist of his employer who, realising that the appellant might kill him, escaped from the house but unfortunately he did not get very far when he collapsed. When the employer's wife, Yaa Manua, started shouting for help, the appellant attacked her with the cutlass and inflicted wounds on her. She ran naked to the nearest police station to report. Later the appellant also [p.188] called at the police station to report that he had killed Kofi Amadu aged about three years and the old man. Upon hearing this, Yaa Manua collapsed at the station. Both she and her husband regained consciousness at the Dormaa-Ahenkro Hospital. After the police had conducted on the spot investigations, it became known that the appellant had killed three persons and had injured several others in the village when he went berserk in the village slashing any one he came across. Consequently, the appellant was charged with the murder of one of the victims, Kofi Amadu, the three-year-old grandson of Nuhu Moshie and Yaa Manua. The defence relied on by learned counsel for the appellant at the trial was insanity. The jury rejected this plea and found the appellant guilty of murder.

The only ground of appeal argued before this court was that the learned trial judge in his summing-up misdirected the jury when he directed them to consider the state of mind of the appellant soon after the killing, that is, when he reported the incident to the police. Learned counsel for the Republic conceded that there was a misdirection in the summing-up and pointed out that the issue of insanity must be related to the time of killing and not to the period after the kil