THE REPUBLIC v. NELSON DOMPREH

JUDGMENT

Nelson Dompreh is charged with stealing cash of GH₵48,270 being the property of

HOB Capital Microfinance Ltd. The accused was employed as a mobile banker and

his duties included as a mobile banker was to go and collect deposits from the

company’s customers, record the transaction in their passbooks and then deposit it

into their individual accounts upon returning to the office. It is the prosecution’s

case that, the accused would collect the money from the customers, make the entries

in their passbooks so they would believe the money had been deposited. But he did

not deposit the money in their accounts and instead used it for his own purposes.

This theft was only discovered when he confessed to prosecution’s first witness and

after a thorough audit was conducted, it revealed that he had kept GH₵48,270

belonging to the bank

The accused denied the offence of stealing and insisted he was innocent of the

charges. He also denied that he had confessed to the crime willingly and claimed

that he was coerced into making a confession of stealing and this was in respect of

the statements he made to police. He challenged the court proceedings, claiming that

he had already been tried and convicted by the court in Accra for stealing and thus the prosecution was estopped from retrying him as it amounted to autrefois convict

and thus a breach of his human rights enshrined under the 1992 constitution. I will

first deal with the accused’s objection to the proceedings on the grounds of autrefois

convict.

Autrefois Convict

Counsel for the accused, in his address and during the trial, raised the issue of

autrefois convict and prayed the court to dismiss prosecution’s case on that ground.

He insisted that the accused person had already been tried and convicted for stealing

from the complainant and should not be made to go through another trial. Reference

was made to several decided cases as well as the 1992 constitution.

Article 19(7) of the 1992 constitution provides that

(7) No person who shows that he has been tried by a competent court for a criminal

offence and either convicted or acquitted, shall again be tried for that offence or for any

other criminal offence of which he could have been convicted at the trial for the offence,

except on the order of a superior court in the course of appeal or review proceedings

relating to the conviction or acquittal.

In Republic v General Court Martial; Ex parte Mensah (1972) 2 GLR 154 CA, the