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The following joint judgment was delivered :-
KINGDON, c.J., NIGERIA, PETRIDES, C.J.. GOLD COAST AND GRAHAM PAUL, J.
In this case the five Appellants were convicted by Lane Ag.
C.J. sitting with Assessors in the Circuit Court of the Protectorate of Sierra Leone of the murder of an unknown man near Giehun on the 11 th April, 1938.
Shortly the facts alleged by the Prosecution are as follows :-
A stranger whose identity has not been discovered came to a place called Lalehun. He passed through Lalehun and the same evening he was murdered at or near the farm hut of one Damanya near Giehun. The murder, it is alleged, was committed' at twilight and the fact of the murder was reported to the Paramount Chief of the District, Jo Kwi, at Lalehun the same night. The suggestion of the prosecution is that the murder was organised by that Chief himself. Chief Jo Kwi however was not charged with any complicity in the murder and was a witness for the Crown at the preliminary investigation.
After the report had been made to the Chief the Crown Case is that the Chief ordered that the body be buried and the day after the murder was committed a party went to the spot and buried the body in a place where (according to the Assessors who sat on the case in the Court below) it was not ;n accordance with native law and custom to bury the body of an unknown stranger.
The motive suggested for the murder was that it was a cannibalistic ritual murder and that mutilation was done on that account.
The case for the defence was that the evidence of the witnesses for the prosecution was a tissue of lies concocted for the purpose of getting the Paramount Chief and his subordinate into trouble. The first and second accused are Sub-Chiefs under the Paramount Chief Jo Kwi. The third accused is a messenger of the Paramount Chief. The fifth accused is a servant of the Paramount Chief. The fourth accused is a farmer and trader living at Panguma, the headquarters of the Paramount Chief
All five accused have appealed to this Court against their convictions on grounds both of fact and law. There are only two grounds of appeal with which it is necessary to deal.
One is that added as No.5 by leave of the Court at the hearing of the appeal namely :~
" That the learned Trial Judge acted wrongly and improperly in allowing the Prosecution not to call and give evidence for the prosecution three of the witnesses for the prosecution who had given evidence in the preliminary Investigation" .
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