FELIX NYONATOR vrs THE REPUBLIC

I have had the privilege of reading the able draft judgment of my learned and respected sister Professor Olivia Anku-Tsede (Mrs), to which my learned and respected sister Gifty Agyei Addo (Mrs) J.A. has subscribed and I am also in entire agreement with her reasoning and conclusion. However, I consider it necessary to put in these few words of my own.

This is a case where the appellant was convicted by the Circuit Court of the offence of defilement. The appellant was accordingly sentenced to 15 years. The appellant expressed his dissatisfaction of the conviction and sentence by appealing to the High Court but the appeal failed, hence the second appeal before this court.

For the fact that my respected sister has taken pains to detail the facts in her judgment I deem it unprofitable to also state the facts of the case, save those that may be unavoidably necessary for purposes of appreciating this delivery

Defilement is essentially sexual offence; it takes place when a child of less than 16 years is carnally known contrary to section 101 (2) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960, (Act 29) which states that:

“A person who naturally or unnaturally carnally knows a child under sixteen years of age, whether with or without the consent of the child, commits a criminal offence and is liable on summary conviction to a term of imprisonment of not less than seven years and not more than twenty-five years”

The authorities have emphasized that in trials of sexual offences such as defilement, corroboration of the victim’s evidence is eminently desirable for an accused to be convicted. See the case of Asante (No.1) vs. The Republic (No.1) (2017-2020) SCGLR 132.

According to Pwamang JSC, in the Asante (No.1) case supra,

“corroboration is evidence which supports the testimony of a witness by confirming that the witness is telling the truth in some material particular in his testimony thereby giving credibility to his story. Corroborative evidence must be independent of and from a source other than the witness whose testimony is sought to be corroborated”

In sexual offences, such as defilement, it may be observed that, it is always the story of the victim and the story of the accused as the sexual event giving rise to the offence invariably takes place in secret, outside the view of any other person. The vexed question in such circumstance is whose evidence should be believed; the victim’s or the accused’s? This is where corroborati