Ngene Arum V. The State (1976)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

FATAYI-WILLIAMS, C.J.N 

On 16th August 1976, the appellant was convicted at the Enugu High Court of the murder of one Aniagu Ugwu and sentenced to death. His appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal against the conviction was dismissed on the 24th day of April, 1978. He has now appealed to this Court.

The only point taken by learned counsel for the appellant at the hearing of the appeal was whether, on the evidence, which the trial judge accepted, he (the trial Judge) was right in finding as he did that the appellant was of sound mind at the time he killed the deceased.

In his submission that the appellant was insane at the time he inflicted the fatal matchet cuts on the deceased, learned counsel referred the court to the provisions of Section 28 of the Criminal Code, which read:

“28. A person is not criminally responsible for an act or omission if at the time of doing the act or making the omission he is in such a state of mental infirmity as to deprive him of capacity to understand what he is doing or of capacity to control his actions, or of capacity to know that he ought not to do the act or make the omission. A person whose mind, at the time of his doing or omitting to do an act, is affected by delusions on some specific matter or matters, but who is not otherwise entitled to the benefit of the foregoing provisions of this section, is criminally responsible for the act or omission to the same extent as if the real state of things had been such as he was induced by the delusions to believe to exist. ”

Learned counsel then submitted that the delusions which the appellant suffered from were such as to make it impossible for him to appreciate or understand the nature of his action and that he did not at the material time know that he ought not to have done what he did. After referring to the findings of the learned trial judge as to the delusions established for the appellant, learned counsel then submitted that once the learned trial judge accepted that the appellant did not know that he ought not to do what he did because of those delusions he should have found him to be insane and therefore not guilty of murder as charged. After stating that his submissions were based on the provisions of the second paragraph of Section 28 of the Code, learned counsel finally contended that the paragraph, if properly analyzed, can be interpreted in three ways and that if the evidence which the learned trial judge accepted fitted into anyone of the three categories, the appellant should have been given the benefit of the plea. He did not, however, elaborate on any of these three ways referred to him in his final submission.

Before considering the submissions of learned counsel for the appellant, I would refer to the findings of the learned trial judge on the point in issue, which read:

“I am prepared to accept as established that the accused person knew what he did but felt justified in what he did and did not know that he ought not to do it but in the absence of any evidence that he was suffering from a mental disease or from mental infirmity, the defence of insanity as provided for in the first paragraph of Section 28 of the Criminal Code is not available to him (see Rex v. Sunday Omoni 12 W.A.C.A. 511 pages 512 and 513).

All that has been established on behalf of the accused is that he was suffering from a delusion at the time he killed the deceased which delusion still persists and has not responded to treatment. The delusions from which he suffers are that the deceased stole his money, brought native doctors to bewitch him, said something adverse to his interest to his employers, and ganged up people against him. Assuming that his delusional beliefs are correct, under the provisions of the second paragraph of Section 28, his delusions will afford him no defence to the offence, which he has committed. The accused person is not justified in killing the deceased because he stole his money, brought native doctors to bewitch him, made adverse report to his interest to his employer and ganged up people against him.”

In my view, these findings are a complete answer to the points canvassed before us by learned counsel for the appellant. This is because an accused person, notwithstanding the delusions to which he is subject, is still criminally responsible for his act or omission to the same extent as if the real state of things had been such as he was induced by the delusions to believe to exist. In other words, before the defence of insanity based on a delusion can be of any avail to an accused person, the response of the accused to the state of things as believed by him must be such that it could be regarded as a legitimate and natural reaction to such a state of things. Thus, if an accused person, under the influence of his delusion, supposes that another man was going to kill him, and he then kills the man believing that he did so in self-defence, he would be exempted from punishment for the killing. But if his delusion was that the man had inflicted a serious injury to his character or his fortune, and he then kills him in revenge for such supposed injury, he would be liable to punishment for murder (see the Rules in McNaughten’s Case, (1843) 8 Eng. Rep. 718 at page 723).

Now to go back to the case in hand, the appellant was under delusions that the deceased:

(a) Stole his money;

(b) Brought native doctors to bewitch him;

(c) Said something adverse to his interest to his employers; and