REPUBLIC v. LIBERTY PRESS LTD. AND OTHERS

JUDGMENT OF AKUFO-ADDO C.J.

On 8 January this year the Attorney-General applied under Order 59 of the Supreme [High] Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 1954 (L.N. 140A) by motion ex parte for leave to apply for writs for the attachment of the persons named in the application for contempt of court in printing and publishing an article entitled "Justice delayed is justice denied" in the journal Legon Observer of the issue of 8-21 December 1967. Leave was granted by me and the application was made on 22 January 1968, by motion on notice to the contemnors, that is, the Liberty Press Ltd., the printers of the journal aforesaid and 28 professors and lecturers of the University of Ghana, Legon, who operate under the unincorporated name of "Legon Society on National Affairs" the publishers and distributors of the said Legon Observer and the editor of the said journal.

The article complained of by the Attorney-General is in the following terms:

"WE HAVE had occasion once in the Legon Observer (Vol. II, No. 19) to draw attention to the number of cases still pending [p.125] in our courts of law. Some of these cases have been pending for so long that, quite understandably, most law officers have forgotten about the existence of such cases. The law officers at the Attorney-General's Office seem to be so overworked that, with the best will in the world, they can hardly call all the cases for trial or review. It is to make the wheels of justice move faster that the recent increase in the salaries of the law officers in the Attorney-General's Office has been welcomed. The hope is that the recent increase will attract a sufficiently large number of good lawyers to review all pending cases so that the guilty can be punished and the innocent set free.

One outstanding unfortunate case which has been pending for a long time is the one involving Messrs. H. K. Djaba, F. Y. Asare and J. Quartey. These gentlemen were sentenced by Justice Akainyah to long terms of imprisonment on 10th May, 1965. By finding them guilty and sentencing them to various terms of imprisonment the trial Judge might have discharged his duty and allowed justice to take its course. But a cardinal Principle of justice is that not only must justice be done, but it must manifestly be seen to be done. Could justice have been done at a time when Nkrumah was at the height of his power (he had by then dismissed the Chief Justice and two other judges in the Adamafio case), and in a case which was so inextricably