Francis Tete Lawson & Ors Vs The State (1975) LLJR-SC

Francis Tete Lawson & Ors Vs The State (1975)

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B. A. COKER, J.S.C. 

The appellants are two of five persons charged before and tried by the High Court Ikeja, Lagos State, for offences described on the Information as follows:-

“COUNT 1

Statement of Offence

Conspiracy to commit a felony contrary to Section 516 of the Criminal Code.

Particulars of Offence

(1) Francis Tete Lawson (m), (2) Olayemi Oke, alias Olayemi Nathan-Marsh, alias Apinke Oke (f), (3) Captain Olufela Nathan-Marsh (m), (4) Esther Oladosu Oke, alias Elizabeth Oladosu Oke (f), and (5) Dominic Bassey (m) on or about the 3rd day of November, 1973, at Ikeja in the Lagos State Judicial Division, conspired together and with other persons unknown to commit a felony to wit: to export two suitcases of Indian hemp.

COUNT II

Statement of Offence

Attempt to export Indian hemp contrary to Section 14(2) of the Indian Hemp Decree and punishable under Section 4 of the Indian Hemp Decree, 1966.

Particulars of offence

(1) Francis Tete Lawson (m), (2) Olayemi Oke, alias Olayemi Nathan-Marsh, alias Apinke Oke (f), (3) Captain Olufela Nathan-Marsh (m), (4) Esther Oladosu Oke, alias Elizabeth Oladosu Oke (f), and (5) Dominic Bassey (m) on the 3rd day of November, 1973, at Ikeja in the Lagos State Judicial Division attempted to export two suitcases of Indian hemp.

COUNT III

Statement of Offence

Unlawful possession of Indian hemp contrary to section 5(1)(b) of the Indian Hemp Decree of 1966.

Particulars of Offence

(1) Francis Tete Lawson (m), (2) Olayemi Oke, alias Olayemi Nathan-Marsh, alias Apinke Oke (f), (3) Captain Olufela Nathan-Marsh (m), (4) Esther Oladosu Oke alias Elizabeth Oladosu Oke (f), and (5) Dominic Bassey (m) on or about the 3rd day of November, 1973 at Ikeja in the Lagos State Judicial Division knowingly and unlawfully possessed two suitcases of Indian hemp.

COUNT IV

Statement of Offence

False declarations contrary to Section 192 of the Criminal Code.

Particulars of Offence

Olayemi Oke (f) on the 6th day of December, 1973, at Ikeja, in the Ikeja Judicial Division, being permitted by law to make declarations before a person authorised by law to permit it to be made before him to wit: Mr. Olatunde Ademosu, a Commissioner for Oaths who was then permitted by law to permit the said declarations to be made before him, which said declarations were false in material particulars, namely in that it was thereby declared that:-

‘Her passport No. 14481 issued in August 1970 was lost in the month of June, 1973 at Bar Beach when she went on a picnic’

WHEREAS IN TRUTH:-

She travelled from Lagos to London and London to Lagos, with the said passport No. 14481 on 9th September, 1973, 11th September, 1973, 14th September, 1973, 18th September, 1973, and 5th October, 1973 as the said Olayemi Oke then well knew.

COUNT V

Statement of Offence

Unlawful possession of Indian hemp contrary to Section 5(1)(b) of the Indian Hemp Decree of 1966.

Particulars of Offence

Esther Oladosu Oke, alias Elizabeth Oladosu Oke (f) on or about the 4th day of November, 1973, at Abeokuta in the Abeokuta Judicial Division knowingly and unlawfully possessed two cement bags containing Indian hemp.”

In the High Court, the trial took place before Savage, J., who, after a full hearing of the evidence, discharged all the accused persons on the 1st Count of conspiracy and with respect to the other Counts recorded the following:-

(i) 1st accused guilty on Counts 2 and 3;

(ii) 2nd accused, i.e. 1st appellant herein, guilty on Counts 2 and 3;

(iii) 4th accused, i.e. 2nd appellant herein, guilty on Counts 3 and 5;

(iv) 3rd accused, Captain Olufela Nathan Marsh, was discharged and acquitted on all Counts.

The present appellants, who are the 2nd and 4th accused persons respectively in the High Court, have appealed to this Court against their convictions and a number of grounds of appeal were filed and argued on their behalf. The arguments of counsel for these appellants were very elaborate and we must commend the industry of counsel in facing the enormous task involved in dealing with the very voluminous Record of Appeal which contains, apart from the court notes of the oral evidence, a large number of written materials and/or documentary evidence which featured at the trial. After listening to the argument of learned counsel for the appellants we have come to the conclusion, firstly, that we do not desire to hear learned counsel appearing for the respondent and, secondly, that the matters to be decided on the appeal fall within a very narrow compass.

The arguments on appeal can be briefly summarised as coming under the headings of –

(i) inferences from the evidence;

(ii) jurisdiction to try the 2nd appellant in respect of Count 5 which states that she was in possession of two cement bags of Indian hemp at Abeokuta; and

(iii) inconsistency of recording a conviction on specific charges after an acquittal on a charge of conspiracy or vice-versa.

With respect to the facts of this case, we point out that the evidence is all one way as at the end of the case for the prosecution all the accused persons, including the present appellants, informed the court that they did not intend to call any evidence. They did not in fact call any evidence and what was left for consideration by the learned trial Judge was the evidence of the forty-four witnesses who had given evidence for the prosecution. We are not in any doubt as to the correctness of the summary of the facts which the learned trial Judge had made. We think that there is sufficient justification for the facts he had found from the plethora of evidence which characterised this case. It was not and cannot be disputed that on the morning of the 3rd day of November, 1973, a driver in the regular employment of the 1st appellant, returned to Lagos from the 2nd appellant who habitually lived in Abeokuta, with a large quantity of Indian hemp contained in two suitcases which were later identified at the Ikeja Airport amongst the luggage of the 1st accused, Francis Tete Lawson, who was booked on a flight to London in the United Kingdom. The 2nd appellant admitted that those two boxes were hers and a further search of her home in Abeokuta led to the discovery of another two large bags of Indian hemp which were brought down to Lagos by the Police. At the Customs, the 5th accused, Dominic Bassey, a Customs official who should in the events not have been on duty on the day and time concerned, was shown to have irregularly passed the suitcases and channelled them into the containers from where they should be loaded on to the plane. This short story depicting the hard core of the case for the prosecution, is indisputably discernible from the mass of evidence, oral and documentary, before the learned trial Judge and to our minds equally suggests the complicity of the appellants to the extent of the particular charges against them. The learned trial Judge took the view, with which we agree, that the evidence which he had accepted, established the offences of which they were convicted and after acquitting the appellants, as well as the others, on the 1st Count of conspiracy, convicted them as stated earlier on. We do not agree with learned counsel for the appellants that the inferences drawn from the facts are unwarranted or that they could be impugned in the way he has sought to challenge them. We do not accede to the ground of appeal challenging the inferences and or findings of facts.

Next, it was contended that inasmuch as the 5th Count directed against the 2nd appellant only states that the possession of the hemp was at Abeokuta, that appellant could not and should not have been tried in Lagos. We do not accept this contention and we think the short answer to it is contained in Section 64(c) of the Criminal Procedure Act Cap. 43. The learned trial Judge took the view, which we also take, that the quantity of Indian hemp in Exhibits 43 and 44 were only part of a larger consignment always in the possession of the 2nd appellant and from which she had freely drawn on the morning of the 3rd November, 1973. Section 64(c) of the Criminal Procedure Act provides as follows:-

“64. Subject to the powers of transfer contained in the Ordinance or Law constituting any court the place for the trial or investigation of offences by such court shall be:-

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(c) when an act is an offence by reason of its relation to any other act which is also an offence, a charge of the first mentioned offence may be tried or inquired into by a court having jurisdiction in the division or district either in which it happened, or in which the offence with which it was so connected happened.

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We are satisfied that the offence charged in the 5th Count is related to the other offences with which the 2nd appellant was charged and which later offences are indisputably triable by the learned trial Judge who had tried this case.

Lastly, it was contended for the appellants that as they were discharged by the learned trial Judge on the 1st Count of conspiracy, it was inconsistent to have found them guilty of the substantive offences contained on the Information. The argument proceeded on the basis that conspiracy is proved either by independent evidence of its happening or by the evidence of specific acts portraying a conspiracy. We do not think that the basis of the submission is sound; at least it overlooked the fact that conspiracy may be proved by both methods combined as well as other ways and as we have often said, it is not necessary in order to prove conspiracy that the conspirators should all be seen, like those who murdered Julius Caesar, to be coming out of the same place at the same time. In the present case, the learned trial Judge took the view that, whatever evidence the prosecution produced concerning the Count of conspiracy, he was not satisfied with such evidence with respect to that Count but he demonstrated by his judgment that in so far as the specific offences with which the appellants were charged are concerned, he was satisfied that the evidence established their guilt. Although learned counsel for the appellants urged on us strongly the argument of an irreconcilability of an acquittal on a Count of conspiracy with a conviction on the charge or charges of the specific offences of the supposed conspiracy, and indeed referred us on this point to authorities, we are at a loss to appreciate the strength which learned counsel had purported to bestow on the argument for, in the case of R. v. Sweetland (1957) 42 C.A.R., on which he relied, the following passage appeared in the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal at page 66 of the Report:-

“This court is not laying down in this case, and has no intention of allowing this case to be quoted as an authority for saying, that, whenever a verdict of Not Guilty is returned on a count for conspiracy to commit offences and Guilty on other counts in the same indictment charging those specific offences, or contrariwise when a verdict of Guilty is returned on the count of conspiracy and Not Guilty on the counts charging specific offences, the verdict is necessarily inconsistent. Each case must depend on its particular circumstances, and it is very dangerous in circumstances of this sort to lay down general rules which could be quoted when the facts might be entirely different.”

Clearly, in this case, the court made it abundantly clear that no principle of any general application was being laid down in the argument about inconsistency and that a great deal must and will depend upon the particular circumstances of each case. In the present case, we are satisfied that there is no inconsistency. We are satisfied as well that the evidence adduced and the facts found established the offences for which the appellants were convicted. On this hypothesis there is no room for any argument about inconsistency it being manifest that in this particular case the prosecution had only sought, but clearly unsuccessfully, to establish conspiracy by what is contained in the judgment of the learned trial Judge as “statements of facts posterior in time to the hatching of conspiracy” and the extra-judicial statements “made by any accused persons inculpating his or her co-accused”. We share the views of the learned trial Judge on his stand in this respect.

It follows therefore that all the grounds of appeal canvassed before us on behalf of the appellants fails and their appeals also fail. They are dismissed. The convictions of the appellants and the sentences imposed on them are affirmed.

Other Citation: (1975) LCN/2033(SC)