The Queen Vs Nnana Okoro (2010)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

JUDGEMENT ABBOTT, AG. CJF 

This is an appeal from a conviction for murder by the High Court, Calabar, which came before us on 3rd June, 1960. We then dismissed the appeal, and we now give our reasons for so doing. PAGE| 2 There was no challenge of the prosecution evidence in cross examination at the trial, and it was only when the appellant himself came to give evidence that he disclosed that his true defence was that he did not kill anybody and was surprised to find himself in court. In his statement to the Police, made shortly after his arrest, the appellant frankly admitted killing the deceased with his matchet. Deceased, he said, had not annoyed him but was the brother of a woman named Bassey who, so the appellant alleged, had, with a man named Nyong, put a spell on him and made him sexually impotent. Mr. Cole, who appeared for the appellant before us, was given leave to file and argue an additional ground of appeal, which sought to urge that the Judge, having said in his judgment that the appellant statement to the Police suggested that the appellant was not normal, should have given more consideration than he did to the mental state of the appellant at the time of his attack on the deceased. We did not find that this additional ground was of any substance, and the original grounds filed were abandoned. There was absolutely no attempt made to raise in any proper manner the defence of insanity, and the learned trial Judge, in our view, went quite sufficiently into the question of the appellant’s mental condition in his judgment. As we have indicated, there is no doubt whatever that the appellant brutally attacked and killed the deceased, and we can see no reason for disturbing the decision of the learned trial Judge. There are, however, two matters to which we would refer. We observe that after the appellant had made his statement above referred to, he was taken before a superior police officer, when the statement was read over to him in the presence of that officer, and he agreed that it was the correct version of what he had said. The interpretation of this statement between the superior police officer and the appellant was, however, carried out by the constable to whom the statement had originally been made. While we appreciate the difficulties which do frequently arise in securing the services of sufficiently competent interpreters for such a purpose as this, we think it is undesirable to use as an interpreter the constable who has actually taken the statement, and that wherever possible this should be avoided. The second matter to which we desire to refer is that according to the superior police officer, who was the first prosecution witness, the statement made by the accused was made in the Efik language. Yet when the constable who took it and interpreted it to the superior officer gave evidence, he said that the statement was made in Anang language. After the statement had been interpreted to P.W.1, the constable who originally took it and interpreted it to P.W.1 wrote a certificate in which he stated that he acted as interpreter in the Ibibio language. While it may well be that the three languages (or dialects which is probably the better term) are sufficiently similar to avoid lack of understanding of what was being said, it is obvious that more care should have been taken to use throughout the dialect native to the appellant, whichever one of the three it was. And had the statement been the only evidence against the appellant we might have had to consider whether a conviction thereon was justified. However, there was ample other evidence against the appellant of his having killed the deceased, and therefore the two points mentioned above make no difference to the learned Judge’s decision in the case, which we consider was right. Appeal dismissed.

FSC. 141/1960