Sule Iyanda Salawu V. The State (1972) LLJR-SC

Sule Iyanda Salawu V. The State (1972)

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T. O. ELIAS, C.J.N. 

On February 24, 1971, the accused was at the Oshogbo High Court convicted by Ogunkeye, J., of the murder of one Ramota Abeo and sentenced to death. His appeal to the Western State Court of Appeal was dismissed and the conviction and sentence were affirmed on June 28, 1971. When his appeal to this court was heard on August 14, 1972, we dismissed it, and now give our reasons for so doing.

The facts were briefly as follows: the 2nd to the 5th prosecution witnesses deposed that they, the deceased and the appellant lived in the same house at Ogbagba village in the Ede District of Western State of Nigeria, and that the 2nd prosecution witness is appellant’s uncle, the 3rd prosecution witness is his mother, the 4th prosecution witness is his father, the 5th prosecution witness is appellant’s uncle’s (2nd P.W.’s wife), while the deceased was appellants’s father’s (4th P.W.’s) junior wife.

They further deposed that on April 16, 1968, all six of them had their evening meal together in the common hall of their house, and retired to their respective bedrooms between 9 and 10 p.m; that, shortly thereafter, they heard a loud exclamation in Yoruba “Sule pa mi o!” meaning in English “Sule is killing me!” or “Sule, you are killing me!”; that, on rushing out of their rooms, they found Ramota Abeo lying on the floor of the common hall covered with blood and already dead, but showing a severe laceration at the back; that the accused, who shared his father’s room because he had no separate one of his own, was nowhere to be found.

The appellant’s uncle (2nd prosecution witness) then set out that night for Ede where he lodged a complaint at the Local Government Police Station whence he was directed to the Nigeria Police Station at Oshogbo where four police constables were detailed to accompany him back to Ede. There, the appellant, who had apparently been arrested and detained by the Ede Local Government Police, was found and taken to Ogbagba village by the four policemen and the 2nd P.W.

On arrival at the scene of the crime, the party saw the corpse of the deceased, collected it together with an axe found by the side of the body and removed them to Oshogbo, where the 1st Prosecution witness, the Medical Officer in charge, performed a post mortem examination on the corpse. In order to obtain the Pathologist’s opinion in respect of the suspected blood stains on the clothing and the axe, the latter were sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory at Oshodi in Lagos. When, in due course, the appellant was charged with the deceased’s murder, he made a statement, Exhibit A (A1 in English translation) to the 6th prosecution witness, the investigating police officer, and later confirmed it before the 7th prosecution witness, a superior police officer, who countersigned Exhibit A.

The appellant at the trial denied having made the statement (Exhibit A), but admitted that part of the statement which said that he fought the deceased because she did not give him food. He also said that he could not remember the time of the deceased’s death or any subsequent event until his arrest by the Ede police. After a careful and detailed review of the evidence, the learned trial Judge convicted the appellant of the murder of Ramota Abeo and sentenced him to death.

Of the five additional grounds of appeal filed by Mrs. Solanke, learned counsel for the appellant, only the following three grounds were argued before the Western State Court of Appeal:

“1.  The learned trial Judge erred in law by his failure to investigate whether or not the appellant was of sound mind in view of:-

(a)  the following finding by the Judge: ‘Here indirectly in my view, the defence was raising the defence of insanity. I have to say that the fact that a person makes a meaningless or inconsistent statement does not prove he is insane at any particular time.

(b) The nature of the evidence of the appellant in his own defence.

2. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself when he held that upon the circumstantial evidence before him, the guilt of the appellant was the only reasonable inference which was possible and thereby came to a wrong conclusion.

3. The learned trial Judge misdirected himself when he held as follows:-

There are facts, in my view, outside the confession which make it probable that the accused did make it, particularly that he did say he used an axe to inflict a cut on the back of the deceased. I therefore find that the statement attributed to the accused was made by him and being a confessional statement, it concludes the case against him’”.

The learned trial Judge pointed out the confessional statement, though retracted in court at the trial, was independently corroborated by the evidence of the 2nd to the 5th prosecution witnesses in all essential particulars. Moreover, the doctor’s post mortem report corroborated the fact that the deceased had a laceration at the back, and the evidence of Yakubu Abudu (6th prosecution witness) confirmed that the appellant was arrested at Ede and thence taken to his village. In our view, the Western State Court of Appeal was, therefore, right in accepting the learned trial judge’s treatment of the appellant’s confessional statement as evidence of what had happened. The prosecution witnesses, including the appellant’s father and mother as well as his uncle, gave an unchallenged account of how they found in the common hall the corpse of the deceased, following her exclamation “Sule pa mi o!”. The Court of Appeal, quite rightly in our view, accepted his declaration as “res gestae”, a point conceded by Mrs. Solanke, learned counsel for the appellant. See Oruakpo Okokor v. The State (1967) NMLR 189. The Court of Appeal was equally in order when it dismissed the appellant’s counsel’s contention that there was discrepancy between the charge which gave April 16, 1968 as the date of death and the post mortem report which would seem to suggest April 15, 1968, in these words:

“We are of the view that the doctor’s evidence, although an opinion of an expert, would not necessarily be given with mathematical precision. On opinion evidence as to time and dates of deaths, ages or other matters where opinion of an expert is sought for, it is sufficient if it is given with near correctness giving due allowance to minimal and negligible inaccuracies as it is in this case. Such minor inaccuracies cannot be held to be fatal to the charge.”

With regard to the first ground of appeal about insanity, Mrs. Solanke argued that the learned trial Judge should have directed that an investigation be conducted into the mental condition of the appellant in view of the latter’s statement in Exhibit A1:

“Yesterday night on 16/4/68 after we have taken our last supper about 8 p.m. myself and Ramota Abeo fought because she did not give me food to eat.”

The Court of Appeal found that the learned trial judge had been right in holding that the appellant “was telling a lie and was only looking for a reason for the crime to justify his action.” The court also pointed out:

“Apart from the passage in the statement referred to, everything in it is in sequence, coherent and rational. If the appellant was insane why did he wait for the cover of the night before the attack Why did he allow everybody apart from himself and the deceased to leave the common hall before the attack Why did he run away immediately after the shout and before the 2nd to the 5th P.Ws. came out Why did he run to Ede his hometown Why was he able to remember all the sequence of events apart from the unintelligible part which was in our view a naive defence on his part We are of the view that the comments and finding of the learned Judge on the question of supper did not raise any question of insanity as to warrant the conduct of any enquiry on the matter.”

The learned Justices of the Western Court of Appeal then concluded as follows:

“We cannot find anything in the record to justify the conclusion that the appellant was on account of either physical or mental condition unable to follow the proceedings nor could it be said that there were circumstances warranting the inference that the learned trial Judge never had it in his mind that whether or not the appellant was fit to stand his trial was a common concern to him as it was to the defence as otherwise he could not have adjourned for a month for the defence counsel to conduct an  investigation as to the appellant’s antecedent. We are of the view that the first ground of appeal must also fail.”

We think that this was a right conclusion on the part of the Western State Court of Appeal. Mr. Akinola, learned counsel for the appellant said before us that he had nothing to urge in favour of the appellant.

For these reasons we dismissed the appeal.

SC.240/1971