Bamidele Patrick V. The State (2018)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

AMINA ADAMU AUGIE, J.S.C.

The Appellant and one other Defendant were tried, convicted and sentenced to death by the Lagos State High Court for the murder of one Sule Ajala (the deceased), who they allegedly beat to death.

The Prosecutions case, as gathered from their four Witnesses, is that Appellant bought a motor cycle for the deceased and it was agreed that he remits a certain sum of money daily to the Appellant, and that he parks the motor cycle daily at an agreed place for safety. The deceased adhered to this agreement until 30/7/2008, when the Appellant did not see the motorcycle where it should have been, and he went along with the second Defendant to find the deceased.

They met up with him between 12.30am and 1am of 1/8/2008, and without waiting to hear what happened to the said motor cycle, they beat up the deceased and left him in the gutter, where he was discovered dead in the morning hours of that same day – 1/8/2006.

The Appellant testified in his defence as DW1, and did not call any other witness. He denied the allegation and claimed

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that when they met up with the deceased that night, his body was battered; that he refused their entreaties to take him for medical treatment, so they left him there, and were surprised when they were arrested.

The learned trial Judge, Dada, J., in his Judgment delivered on 21/4/2017, held that evidence against both of them is unassailable and unequivocal, thus, the conclusion is an irresistible one that they both executed the heinous crime of the murder of the deceased.

Aggrieved by his conviction and sentence to death by hanging, the Appellant appealed to the Court below with a Notice of Appeal containing eight Grounds of Appeal, and formulated four issues i.e.

1. Whether the learned trial Judge was right when in convicting [him], she relied on the confessional statement of Taiwo Durojaiye, the Appellants co-accused (i.e. Exhibits D1-D3)
2. Whether the learned trial judge was right when without proof of the cause of the death of the deceased, she proceeded to consider whether it was the Appellant that caused the death of the deceased.
3. Whether from the facts and circumstances of this

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case, the learned trial Judge was right to have convicted [him] for the offence of murder.

4. Whether from the fact and circumstances of this case, the learned trial Judge denied the Appellant his constitutional right to fair hearing.

The Court below resolved the four issues against him and dismissed his Appeal; it affirmed the conviction and sentence imposed on him.

Further aggrieved, the Appellant appealed to this Court with a Notice of Appeal containing nine Grounds of Appeal, and he distilled five issues for Determination therefrom in his Brief of Argument i.e.

(1) Whether from the facts and circumstances of this case, the Court of Appeal was right when, in the absence of medical evidence as to the cause of the death of the deceased, it held that the death of the deceased was traceable to the physical assault by the Appellant on the deceased