Chukwuma Ezekwe V. The State (2018)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

EJEMBI EKO, J.S.C.

On 11th July, 2012 the Court of Appeal sitting at Owerri dismissed the appeal (No.CA/OW/88/2009) of the Appellant herein and affirmed the conviction and sentence of the Appellant imposed on him by the High Court of Imo State on 31st March, 2009 in the charge No.HOW38C/2006. The Appellant and two others were tried and convicted for the offence of murder punishable under Section 319(1) of the Criminal Code Law applicable in Imo State. The person allegedly murdered was one Mrs. Cecilia Ogbonna.

In the early hours of 30th November, 2005 some persons broke into the apartment of the said Cecilia Ogbonna. She was attacked and injured on her head and other parts of her body. She did not die immediately. The PW.1, Mrs. Grace Igwe, who had come to the house of the deceased around 5.00a.m for a prayer session heard the said deceased groaning in pains. The door was stapled from outside without padlock. The PW.1 forced the door open. The deceased was bleeding. There was blood all over the place.

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The PW.1, noticing she had stepped on the blood on the floor, raised the lantern she came with. She saw that the deceased bleeding, had multiple injuries on the head and all over her bare body. On inquiry, the deceased named the three accused persons, including the Appellant, as her assailants. The PW.1 then raised alarm.

The PW.1 had, earlier in her narration, given all the account of the lingering acrimonious relationship between the deceased, on one hand, and the 1st and 2nd accused persons and their mother, on the other hand. The Appellant was a tenant in the premises occupied by the 1st and 2nd accused persons and their mother, Ifeoma Okereke (Mrs.). The Appellant, who lived on the adjoining compound as a tenant also had his own portion of the acrimony with the deceased. He, in his statement, Exhibit E, alluded to the fact that deceased had earlier in November, 2005, accused him publicly of defecating at her backyard. Prior to this attack the deceased, according to the 1st accused (as DW.4) had accused, before the village elders, the Appellant and the 1st accused “of cutting her electric wires.”

The PW.1 was not the only person the deceased, after the vicious attack on her, had informed that it was the

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Appellant and the 1st and 2nd accused persons were the persons who forcibly entered her room, attacked her and inflicted the injuries on her head and body. The PW.2, a Police officer, was one of such other persons. The PW.2 recorded the deceased’s extra-judicial statement, Exhibit A, on 30th November, 2005, wherein she named the Appellant – “who is a tenant in our area,” as one of three men who forcing her door open, entered her room and started beating her and inflecting injuries on her head, shoulder and chest with sticks and machetes. The PW2 also a Police Officer, was present when the deceased made Exhibit A and told the Police Officers that it was the three accused persons, including the Appellant, who in the early hours of 30th November, 2005 attacked and inflicted injuries on her with sticks and machetes.

The PW.3 also testified that early in the morning of 30th November, 2005, before the arrival of the Police Officers, the deceased had told him and other neighbours that it was the named three accused persons who inflicted the injuries on her. PW.3 also testified, in corroboration of the Police Officers, that at the Federal Medical Centre, the deceased

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at her sick bed, while in pains, had told the Police Officers that the three named accused persons, including the Appellant, caused the injuries on her. The PW.2 is one of the tenants of the deceased. The deceased never recovered from the injuries. She died.

The PW.4, Dr. A. O. Egejuru, a Pathologist, who issued the Medical Report, Exhibit B, was quite categorical in Exhibit B that the cause of the death of the deceased in his opinion, was: Traumatic and haemorrhogic shock due to soft tissue injuries and subdural haemorrhoge with associated coming (sic) associated upon blunt injury to the head.” He observed on the corpse of the deceased that;

There are two separate cuts (lacerations) on the right side of the scalp (head) measuring 7.0 cm and 6.0 cm long respectively with associated bleeding under the head.