The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Yaw Dame, to withdraw the charges or enter a nolle prosequi in the Dr. Stephen Opuni, Seidu Agongo and Agricult court case.
According to the party, such a course is appropriate because past action of the Attorney General in escalating a simple criminal trial to the level of political gamesmanship amounts to unjustified persecution.
Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, the party said, is being mischievously presented as the poster child of NDC-Government corruption who must be jailed by all means because “fair is foul and foul is fair.”
This, the opposition said, makes it abundantly clear the criminal trial of the accused persons is not a criminal prosecution but political persecution by the Attorney General masquerading as an exercise in Rule of Law and criminal justice.
General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, made the call at a press conference to address the ruling by the Majority of the review panel of the Supreme Court on 14th November, 2021 that set aside the ruling of the ordinary bench of the Court dated 28thJuly 2021 in the Opuni case.
The ruling of the ordinary bench quashed parts of the ruling of the trial judge, Justice Clemence Jackson Hoeyenuga, on a submission of no case.
Justice Clemence Jackson Hoeyenuga had excluded 18 exhibits in his ruling that had been accepted in evidence without any objection from any of the parties. The excluded exhibits supported the case of Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, Seidu Agongo and Agricult, as they demonstrated the falsity of the claims of the prosecution that the lithovit fertilizer COCOBOD purchased from Agricult was not of good quality.
Similar exhibits, he said, tendered through the same investigator through whom the 18 excluded exhibits were tendered and which suggested that lithovit fertilizer was inefficacious were retained by the Judge without proferring any justification for his unequal and partial treatment of the exhibits that were adduced in evidence in identical circumstances.
Mr. Asiedu Nketia argued that the rulings by the ordinary bench and the review panel make it clear that the exclusion of evidence by a Judge on his own motion without offering an opportunity to a party affected by the exclusion would be unassailable if the adduction of that evidence had been ‘objected to before it was adduced in evidence.
“It further seems obvious to us that this is the plain or dictionary meaning of the words used in section 8 of the Evidence Act, understood within the context of hallowed principles of common law adversarial proceedings.”
“It is sad that the review majority failed to examine the meaning of section 8 of the Evidence Act, much less reproduce the text of that section in its ruling to enable the reader to follow the context of its analysis,” he stated.
The General-Secretary averred that the decision of the review majority is a travesty of justice and leaves much to be desired and stressed that in a criminal trial, in which an accused person faces an all-powerful State, it is crucially important that justice is not only done but is manifestly seen to be done.
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case in the Opuni matter. Court decisions that have the effect of hindering an accused person’s defence by denying him the use of exhibits in support of his case while allowing the use by the State of similar exhibits obtained and adduced in evidence in similar circumstances send out only one clear message to citizens: the State has been given an advantage that has been denied the accused persons,” he said.
He stressed that any Court decision that produces this effect is flawed and indefensible and must definitely leave one of the parties apprehensive whether the same law applies equally to all persons as the Constitution and the judicial oath demands.
Those that seek justice, he said, shall continue to hope the accused persons will be vindicated by the truth and the law at the end of the trial.
Source: Mypublisher24.com
