Tajudeen Adisa Vs The State (2018)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

KUMAI BAYANG AKA’AHS, J.S.C.

The appellant and his co-accused were tried for conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery and they were sentenced to death for the said offences by the Ogun State High Court. They appealed against their conviction and sentence to the Court of Appeal, Ibadan. The Court held that the prosecution proved the first ingredient of the offence namely that there was a robbery. In considering the second ingredient whether the robbery was armed robbery the Court said at page 198: –

“As has thus been seen the use of cutlass and axe permeates the evidence not only of PW2 and PW3 but also the confessional statement of 1st appellant. I think that it will be right to say that whoever the robbers were, they were armed”.

Despite this finding the Court finally held that since the prosecution failed to tender the cutlass and the axe which were allegedly used in the armed robbery operation and no explanation was supplied for the failure to tender them, the armed robbery was not proved. On this basis the lower

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court set aside the conviction and sentence to death of the appellants for conspiracy and armed robbery but found them guilty of conspiracy and robbery simpliciter and sentenced them to 21 years imprisonment each without option of fine on each of the counts. The Court ordered that the sentences should run concurrently.

The appellant appealed on 5 grounds to the Supreme Court. Issue (iii) in the appellant’s brief was distilled from grounds 2 and 4 of the Notice of Appeal and it reads: –

Whether the Court of Appeal was right when, although it set aside the conviction by the trial Court, of the appellant for the offences of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and armed robbery and thereupon quashed the sentences of death passed by the said Court; yet it found the appellant guilty of conspiracy to commit robbery and robbery in the absence of cogent, credible and sufficient evidence before it which proved that in fact, there had been a robbery and/or that, if there had indeed been a robbery, the appellant was involved in same (Distilled from Grounds 2 and 4 of the Notice of Appeal).

In his brief of argument, learned counsel for the appellant

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submitted that it is the fixed position of the law that the standard of proof required to convict an accused person of a crime is proof beyond reasonable doubt and there is a presumption of innocence encapsulated in Section 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 and Section 138 of the Evidence Act 2011. He argued that in the instant case, the Court of Appeal in one breadth found that the prosecution had proved each of the elements of armed robbery beyond reasonable doubt but in another breadth held that the prosecution had not proved armed robbery beyond reasonable doubt because the alleged offensive weapons used for the alleged robbery were not tendered in evidence by the prosecution.

Learned counsel contended that since the reasoning of the lower Court that the appellants took the plea based on the charge read to them which was to the effect that they carried out the armed robbery with offensive weapons to wit cutlass and axe and the prosecution failed to tender the said weapons and no explanation was forthcoming for the failure to tender them, the inevitable conclusion to be reached is that the prosecution failed to establish the charge of armed robbery.

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Learned counsel disagreed with the finding made by the lower Court that the evidence disclosed the offence of robbery and that the appellants committed the offence.