Adankwor Etumionu V. Attorney-general of Delta State (1994)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

ATINUKE OMOBONIKE IGE, J.C.A

This is an appeal against the judgment of Justice S.M. Edah of Agbor High Court delivered on 26/5/92 whereby the appellant was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Emily Oriaka.

In the lower court two people Obiajunu Etumionu (m) and Adankwor Etumionu (f) – the appellant were first charged on an information for the murder of Emily Oriaka but the first accused was discharged on a no case submission under section 286 of the Criminal Procedure Law. The 2nd accused i.e. appellant in this case proceeded to give evidence in her defence and called no witnesses. The prosecution had earlier called 6 witnesses including the father of the appellant.

The facts of the case are briefly thus.

On 29/1/88 there was a quarrel between the appellant and the deceased whom she often referred to as her grandmother. The deceased made a report of this quarrel to the Police who arrested the appellant and other relations in their compound.

Later the people arrested were released with a warning by the Police that they should go home and live in peace. There was another quarrel between the appellant and the deceased on 5/2/88. Both quarrels were witnessed by the P.W.3 a relation of both the appellant and the deceased. When the deceased returned from her church on the evening of 5/2/88 she could not find the key to her room hence she had to use her duplicate key to open her door – the only entrance to her apartment in their compound. P.W.3 was the last to see off the deceased into her room on the night of 5/2/88.

In the morning of 6/2/88 P.W.3 Agnes Osubor went to see the deceased in her room when the latter didn’t make her usual morning rounds of greeting and to her chagrin she found the deceased stone dead standing erect on the ground with a rope on her neck tied to the bamboo ceiling of the house. P.W.3 raised an alarm and people in the compound came round except the appellant and some of her close relations.

The appellant and her senior brother Obiajunu Etumionu were then charged for the murder of the deceased. The learned trial Judge in a considered ruling discharged the brother Obiajunu and also in a considered judgment convicted the appellant for the murder of Emily Oriaka and sentenced her to death on 28/5/92.

It is against this judgment that the appellant has appealed to this court and filed 8 grounds of appeal as follows:-

1. The learned trial Judge erred in law in finding the appellant guilty of murder when the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt.
2. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself in law when he held:-

“I honestly believe that the matter is much more than mere suspicion. For one may ask, was it a mere coincidence that after the quarrel of the evening of 5/2/88, between the deceased and the accused, the deceased returned from the church service to find the key to her room missing. Was it a mere coincidence that the very next morning, the Deceased’s door was found half open, having been opened from outside”.

3. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself in law when he held:-

“And was it a mere coincidence that after the deceased had been murdered in cold blood, she was made to appear as if she committed suicide.”

4. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself in law when he held:-

“That it was the accused and no one else who opened the Defendant Deceased’s room and strangled her to death.”

5. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself in law when he held:-

“That the accused formed the mens rea on or about 29/1/88 and translated the mens rea into actus reus on 6/2/88”

6. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself in law when he held:

“However, I find the failure of the accused in refusing to respond to the alarm raised by P.W.3 as being contrary to the normal course of human conduct particularly in a close knit society like ours. It seems to be logical arid reasonable to infer from the accused’s conduct that she refused to come out in response to the alarm raised, because she knew she had killed the deceased.”