John Aposi Vs The State (1972)

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COKER, JSC

The appellant was charged with and convicted of the murder, at Eriwu Village farm, Ago-Iwoye, on or about the 26th September, 1968, of one Yesiratu Seidu. He was tried by Abina, J., (High Court, Ijebu-Ode, Western State), convicted as charged and sentenced to death. He appealed against his conviction to the Western State Court of Appeal which dismissed his appeal on the 10th December, 1970. He then appealed to this court. His appeal to this court was dismissed on the 14th August, 1972 and, as stated then, we now give our reasons for doing so.

The case against the appellant rested substantially on the evidence of two prosecution witnesses and his own statement to the Police.

At his trial, he was completely mute and did not utter a word and so the learned trial Judge decided first of all to try the issue as to whether he was mute of malice or mute by the visitation of God. There was before the learned trial Judge abundant evidence that the appellant was able to speak and indeed that he had freely before that time conversed in both the Yoruba and the Tiv languages.

The learned trial Judge, as he was entitled to do, accepted for the purpose of this preliminary trial, the evidence that the appellant was able to speak and converse in those languages in preference to the false impression which the appellant sought to create that he could not understand any language whatsoever. The learned trial Judge concluded that he was mute of malice and not by the visitation of God.

Soon after his arrest, the appellant had made a statement to the Police in Yoruba. So testified P.C. Rufai 8th P.W., who had arrested him and charged him with the murder aforesaid. His statement was admitted in evidence as Exhibit B (English translation, Exhibit B1) and Chief Joseph Abayomi Olorunmodimu, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, 2nd P.W., gave it in evidence that the appellant was brought before him by the policeman, Sunday Rufai, with a statement Exhibit B and that in his presence and to his hearing the appellant accepted and confirmed the voluntariness and correctness of the statement before he, witness, endorsed Exhibit B as the voluntary statement of the appellant. This statement was produced and admitted in evidence without any objection. Although the statement did not anywhere say that it was the appellant who had killed Yesiratu, it contained valuable information about the killing of Yesiratu and indeed stated in many parts thereof that it was one Anthony Ido who had killed Yesiratu. Part of the statement (Exhibit B) reads as follows:-

“That he is the one who kill Yesiratu. And that I should help him to do medicine so that they might not know that he kill Yesiratu. He further stated that I help him to make interprint of his language to the police at Ijebu-Ode. The reason why I confessed to the police was that the police man started to worry me that I killed Yesiratu. That is why I made a confessional statement to the police.”

The case of the prosecution at the trial of the appellant is that Yesiratu Seidu was murdered on the 26th September, 1968. A doctor had performed an autopsy on the corpse of Yesiratu and found that she was a girl of about 10 years old, that externally there were two deep lacerations on the left region of her forehead and that internally there was haemorrhage of the left side of the cerebrum and the brain stem. The doctor thought the injuries were consistent with an impact on those parts of her body caused by a sharp object like a machete and that Yesiratu Seidu died of shock and haemorrhage into the vital centres of the brain as the result of a head injury. The father of Yesiratu was one of the witnesses who testified at the trial of the appellant. He stated that the appellant had lived with him for six years before the death of his daughter and that the appellant lived rent- free in his house and was doing odd jobs for him and other people. He further stated that the appellant lived in the farmhouse belonging to the father of Yesiratu along with three other co-workers and that the appellant was the head of the farm labourers. The witness further stated that his daughter was killed on a Sunday when she went out to the farm after giving him his breakfast and that she never returned alive to their home, and his story was substantially corroborated by his wife, the mother of Yesiratu, by name Mesitura Tayo, 4th P.W.

The witnesses who gave the most damaging evidence affecting the appellant were Seidu Parakoyi 5th P.W., a Muslim priest, and Amusa Otenuga, 6th P.W., a farmer of Ago-Iwoye. Seidu Parakoyi testified at the trial of the appellant that the appellant came to consult him in the course of his calling, confessed to him that he had killed the girl Yesiratu and stated that, as he was in fear of the detection of the offence he wanted him, the witness, to help him “to offer special Koranic prayers so that the incident might not leak out”.

In the same way, Amusa Otenuga, who was with Seidu Parakoyi when the appellant called there, gave evidence that he was present when the appellant confessed to the Muslim priest that it was he who killed the girl Yesiratu Seidu and asked for his assistance to get his complicity in the crime undetected. The investigating police-officer, Sunday Rufai, 8th P.W., told the story of his arrest of the appellant after the body of Yesiratu had been discovered in the bush almost a quarter of a mile from the village, lying face downwards across a small stream with machet cuts on the left side of the skull.

As the appellant still stood mute at the close of the prosecution case, he said nothing in his own defence but learned counsel appearing for him addressed the court at length, submitting, firstly, that the inconsistencies in the evidence of the prosecution witnesses should create a doubt about the complicity of the appellant and, secondly, that the confessions of the appellant given in evidence by his statements should be rejected and that the resultant and remaining circumstantial evidence be regarded as inadequate to sustain his conviction.

In the course of his reserved judgment, the learned trial judge had held on the authority of Q. v. Adelabu & Anor. (1955/56) WRNLR 111, that such discrepancies as existed in the evidence of the two witnesses, Seidu Parakoyi and Amusa Otenuga, were consistent only with the “normal imperfections in human recollection” and that the “whole effect” of their stories was the same. With respect to the extra-judicial confessions of the appellant, the learned trial Judge directed himself along the lines of the principles laid down in R. v. Sykes (1913) 8 CAR 232 and Q. v. Enan Jegede & Ors. (1955/56) WRNLR 33 and looked for materials from the evidence which tended to make the confessions probable or rather more probable. After a really meticulous examination of the statement of the appellant Exhibit B, the learned trial Judge, quite properly in our view, concluded that it adequately corroborated the extra-judicial confessions made to the prosecution witnesses, Parakoyi and Otenuga. The learned trial Judge also thought that the other evidence about the complicity of the appellant, although merely circumstantial, pointed only in one direction and that was to the guilt of the appellant of the crime charged. He convicted the appellant as charged and sentenced him to death.

The appellant unsuccessfully appealed against his conviction to the Western State Court of Appeal and after the dismissal of that appeal by that court, he had appealed to this court. Before us, many grounds of appeal were filed on behalf of the appellant but only one was in fact argued, the others having been either abandoned or demonstrated to be worthless. The ground of appeal argued reads as follows:-

“The learned Appellate Court erred in law in admitting that part of the Statement of the appellant (Exhibit B) which is against his (Appellant’s) interest without giving any or sufficient consideration to the other part of the evidence which favours him (the appellant) and thereby on the totality of evidence resolve a benefit of doubt on the proof of guilt in favour of the appellant.”

On this ground of appeal, it was submitted to us that there were other parts or portions of the statement (Exhibit B) that favoured the appellant and that if those portions were considered along with the portions which supported or portrayed his guilt, a reasonable doubt would have been cast upon the guilt of the appellant and he would have got the benefit of that doubt. Learned counsel was able to instance only one passage in the statement Exhibit B where the appellant had stated that he did not kill the girl Yesiratu and that all the policemen in Ago-Iwoye knew that he did not kill her. The argument had proceeded on an incorrect view that the appellant had been convicted solely upon his own statement. He was not. He had been convicted on the totality of the evidence given at his trial. He himself had chosen to stand mute of malice throughout and had taken no steps, as he was undoubtedly entitled to do, to controvert any portion of his statement, Exhibit B. The statement was not his evidence but part of the case for the prosecution. The learned trial Judge manifestly considered that he was the murderer of Yesiratu Seidu on the abundance of the evidence before him. Such evidence contained the confession of the appellant that he had killed Yesiratu Seidu; his unavailing endeavours to get his own complicity undetected; his voluntary statement to the Police that he knew about the killing of the girl by one of his own labourers, Anthony Ido, the puerile and ineffective manoeuvres to exculpate himself and the ample opportunities he had of committing the crime.

We were of the view that the case against the appellant was abundantly proved; that there was nothing impeachable in the judgments of the learned trial Judge and the Western State Court of Appeal and that there was absolutely no substance in the complaints on appeal before us. We therefore dismissed the appeal at the hearing.

Other Citation: (1972) LCN/1242(SC)