The accused who is arraigned on indictment before this court for having committed the first degree felony of attempted murder contrary to section 48 of the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29), has pleaded "not guilty" to the charge. He, however, prays the court to accept a plea of "guilty" to the lesser offence of causing intentional and unlawful harm contrary to section 69 of the same Code aforesaid.
The facts of the case are, inter alia, that the accused inflicted severe cutlass wounds on his wife with the obvious intention of killing her. Miraculously, the wife did not succumb to the wounds. Hence the charge of attempted murder. These facts are being outlined here to enable everybody to appreciate the serious consequences of the matter in its proper perspective.
To my mind, it would be nothing short of a mockery of justice, if a person who commits a serious offence and ought to face the full rigours of the law, were to be allowed to plead guilty to a lesser offence which would inure to his benefit in the sense that he would be given a minor punishment far incommensurate with the gravity of the crime he has committed. It seems to me to be pre-eminently important that before a court acquits an accused person of the offence charged, and accepts a plea of "guilty" to some other offence not charged, the trial court ought to take into consideration the existence or non-existence of the evidence required to sustain the crime charged. If there is strong prima facie evidence to support the offence charged, a court ought not to accept the plea of "guilty" to some other offence not charged largely because that would result in injustice. In my view, it should be the duty of courts of criminal jurisdiction not to set bad precedents. The provisions of section 239 (2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960 (Act 30) (which permit accused [p.745] persons to plead guilty to offences not charged) should be sparingly applied in exceptional cases only and should not be used to create a leeway through which criminals could escape penal sanctions attached to the offences they commit. I suppose that the real intention of the legislature in enacting section 239 (2) of Act 30 was not to create a loophole in the law through which accused persons can easily escape due punishment for crimes committed. The provision is designed to facilitate and expedite the disposal of criminal cases, i.e. where the facts do not support the offence charged, it would be pointless to go through a futile e
