Posted by By GODWIN TSA Abuja on
The Supreme at the weekend upturned the death sentence passed on a Police Corporal, Mr. Sunday Udosen by an Okigwe High Court and affirmed by the Court of Appeal, for want of direct evidence against him.
The Supreme at the weekend upturned the death sentence passed on a Police Corporal, Mr. Sunday Udosen by an Okigwe High Court and affirmed by the Court of Appeal, for want of direct evidence against him.
Police Corporal Udosen, was sentenced to death 15 years ago, by hanging by an Okigwe High Court, for allegedly killing a middle-aged woman, late Eunice Ikezuagu, for refusing his sexual overtures. The Court of Appeal had on November 21, 1987 affirmed the death sentence.
Justice George Oguntade, who read the unanimous judgment of the court said, "the case of the prosecution in this case is bedeviled by the conflicting versions of the evidence given by the prosecution witnesses."
According to him, "this has led to a situation where each of the versions does not make a consistent story as to who killed the deceased without being linked with the other and both versions could not possibly have been true or correct.
"The resulting doubt ought to have been resolved in favour of the appellant (Corporal Udosen). In the final conclusion, this appeal is allowed. The judgments of the two courts below are set aside. The appellant is discharged and acquitted."
Narrating the background of the case, some of the policemen on duty that day before the Okigwe High Court was to the effect that Corporal Udosen was on road duty on November 21, 1987 with some other policemen at about 4:p.m along Okigwe-Enugu Express Road.
According to them, while they were there, a Jetta Saloon car with its headlights on sped past the police check-point. It refused to stop in spite of the fact that the policemen flagged it down and ordered it to stop for inspection.
They told the court that "because the Jetta car failed to stop, Corporal Udosen opened gun fire on the car shouting in the process "armed robbers! armed robbers!!"The policemen who testified for the prosecution also added that notwithstanding the move made by the Constable to disable the car, the driver of the Jetta did not stop, a development that made the policeman on trial alongside others to jump into a taxi to chase the Jetta car but they could not trace the car and its occupants. A little later after the gun shot was fired by Constable Udosen, an alarm was raised as a body of a woman, late Eunice, was found along a lane of the Enugu -Okigwe Express Road, bleeding.
Given the evidence of the policemen on duty, it was not quite clear how Eunice had come by her injuries even though it was only Constable Udosen that firedonly one gun shot.
But another prosecution witness and meat-seller who claimed to witness how late Eunice was shot dead narrated that Eunice was coming to his shop to buy meat.
According to him, on her way coming, two policemen accosted her, wanting to have an affair with her but that she refused saying she was married.
Dissatisfied with her turning them down, Constable Udosen first asked why she had to refuse them muttering if she was Queen Elizabeth.
The meat-seller added that while late Eunice was leaving them to come to his table for her meat, one of the policemen pulled the trigger and shot her dead.
According to him, he said he could not identify who between the two policemen that pulled the trigger but that there was pandemonium after the gun shot as he himself had to take cover while the policemen ran away.
The scene of the murder (locus in quo) is a stone throw to the policemen's duty post.
The trial court convicted Constable Udosen who did not deny firing gun shot of the charge of murder, saying without the evidence of the meat-seller, it was clear
from the available evidence that it was he that killed late Eunice.
The Court of Appeal though said that the high court seemed to have stumbled on the verdict but that all the same, the verdict was proper.
But the Supreme Court reversed the sentence on the ground that there were conflicting versions of evidence linking the accused person.