JUDGMENT OF ARCHER J.
The fourteen respondents were prosecuted by the State for refusing to provide communal labour lawfully demanded, contrary to section 113 of the Labour Ordinance,1 and were convicted in the Asikuma-Ajumako-Enyan Local Court. They appealed to the Cape Coast Circuit Court and their convictions and sentences were set aside. The learned circuit judge then awarded ¢60.00 (sixty cedis) costs against the complainant and added that the costs would have been awarded against the trial magistrate, had the court any power so to do. The State appealed against the award of costs against the complainant. When the appeal was summarily heard, I decided to treat it as a hearing of the substantive appeal because it was obvious that the learned circuit judge had no power to award costs against the complainant.
[p.452]
Section 60 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960,2 allows complaints to be made either by making a complaint to a district magistrate and applying for the issue of either a warrant or a summons and secondly by bringing a person arrested by a warrant before the court upon a charge. Section 57 then provides that a person who makes a complaint before a district court may conduct the prosecution of the cause or matter to which the complaint relates in person or by a legal practitioner. It follows therefore that criminal cases may be prosecuted by private prosecutors as complainants or by public prosecutors authorised by the Attorney-General.
However, section 139 (3) of Act 30 also provides that:
"A Court that acquits or discharges a person accused of an offence, if the prosecution for such offence was originally instituted on a summons or warrant issued by a Court on the complaint of a private prosecutor, may order the private prosecutor to pay to the accused such reasonable costs as the Court thinks fit."
Private prosecutor is defined in subsection (7) of section 139 to mean “any person who is not prosecuting as public prosecutor." This section means that no costs can be awarded against a public prosecutor and this would include the State. Costs can only be awarded against a complainant who himself conducts the prosecution or by a legal practitioner on his behalf.
In the present appeal, the respondents were prosecuted by the sanitary officer who is a public prosecutor on behalf of the State and it follows that no costs could be awarded against the person who lodged the complaint but did not prosecute the complaint himself as a private p
