[1959]DLCA2050 • October 5, 1959 • Court of Appeal
R. vs. MOSHIE
The appellant committed an act of slashing Kwadwo Anthony to death with a cutlass. The appellant claimed he was under threat and attacked men only, but evidence showed he attacked women and children, and his perception of events was inconsistent with reality, suggesting he was living in a delusional state at the time of the act.
read more(After stating the facts his lordship proceeded:-) In our view, the evidence given at the trial of the appellant raised the question whether or not, when he committed the act which he admits he committed, he was under an insane delusion as defined in section 52, sub-section 2 of the Criminal Code, so as, in the opinion of the Court, to render him an unfit subject for punishment. The story consistently told by the appellant does not fit into the known facts; for example, apart from his landlord, and some of the people who arrived on the scene in consequence of the alarm, the people whom the appellant attacked were only women and children, while according to the appellant the people were all men, grown-ups; he never saw a child anywhere near. The story is such that the only impression it gives is that at the moment when he did the act he was living in a world entirely his own and quite different from that in which all other people in the village, who witnessed the scene, were living....