REPUBLIC v. KORLE GONNO DISTRICT MAGISTRATE GRADE I; EX PARTE AMPOMAH
1991
COURT OF APPEAL
GHANA
CORAM
- AMPIAH
- AMUAH
- OFORI-BOATENG JJ.A
Areas of Law
- Administrative Law
- Evidence Law
- Civil Procedure
1991
COURT OF APPEAL
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Republic appealed against the High Court's decision which quashed the coroner's inquest into Emmanuel Atta Ampomah's death. The High Court initially ruled the cause of death as natural, thus nullifying the inquest. The appellate court found that the applicant had sufficient standing and the coroner acted within his lawful discretion in holding an inquest when the cause of death was uncertain. The appeal also highlighted procedural errors by the High Court, including the lack of valid proceedings to quash. The appeal was allowed, and the inquest by the coroner was deemed valid.
JUDGMENT OF OFORI-BOATENG J.A.
This is an appeal against the ruling of the High Court, Accra presided over by Aryeetey J. The facts briefly are as follows: On 29 January 1990, Emmanuel Atta Ampomah died at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. On the same day, an autopsy was conducted on the deceased by a pathologist, Dr. William Minnow Simmons, in the presence of one Dr. Boateng, a nephew of the deceased.
[p.359]
It would appear that as Dr. Boateng did not suspect any foul play regarding his uncle's death, he somehow rushed Dr. Simmons to do only a "partial post-mortem" just to verify the clinical diagnosis of cerebrovascular accident. And so if death had been caused by poisoning, for example, he could not have known through that partial post-mortem.
Later, the relatives of the deceased expressed dissatisfaction with this autopsy and demanded another one from a different source. The second autopsy was carried out in the department of pathology under the general supervision of Dr. Felix Dodu. There also it was said: "The immediate cause of death is undetermined."
In the light of these facts and the conclusion of the report from the doctors who did the autopsy, the District Court Magistrate, Korle Gonno, in his capacity as the coroner of that jurisdictional district where the death occurred, decided to hold a coroner's inquiry into the death of the deceased to ascertain the cause of the death. In the course of his inquest, he was stopped in his tracks by an order from the High Court, at the instance of one Madam Flora Ampomah, the widow of the deceased, because of the pendency of certiorari and prohibition proceedings against the inquest. Madam Ampomah interceded because she had been suspected of having administered poison to her husband, hence the husband's family's unhappiness about the two autopsies. She also thought the rejection of the autopsies as well as the coroner's inquest, which had culminated in her being questioned at the inquest, were unwarranted harassments as a few months previously she had been interrogated by the police on the suspicion of having a hand in her husband's death.
The learned High Court judge who heard the certiorari application called evidence and came to the conclusion that there was ample evidence from the doctors who conducted the autopsy that the cause of the death of the deceased was clear; that he died of natural causes, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. The coroner therefore had no mandate under the Coroners Act, 1