MANU vs. THE STATE

The appellant was convicted of murder at the Criminal Session of the High Court, Kumasi, for killing a farm labourer by shooting him in the back with a gun taken from another person’s room, and for fatally cutting a woman with a cutlass shortly thereafter. A child witness identified the appellant as the person who chased her and her mother and struck the mother with the cutlass. In his cautioned statement, the appellant admitted taking the gun, shooting the man, slashing the woman, reloading the gun, and later producing the gun and cutlass to the police. At trial, however, he advanced a case suggestive of insane delusion, saying he thought he had seen and pursued an animal before realizing he had butchered a human being. Portion of judgment: “It is apparent from the foregoing that the appellant at the trial relied upon the defence of insane delusion...”

JUDGMENT OF BRUCE-LYLE J.S.C. Bruce-Lyle, J.S.C. delivered the judgment of the court. The appellant was convicted of murder at the Criminal Session of the High Court held at Kumasi on 10 August 1964. The case for the prosecution is that the appellant lived with one James Djomoh, the sixth prosecution witness, and Akua Nkyeraa, Djomoh’s wife the fifth prosecution witness, in the same house in a small village called Asakyerowa near Brofoyedru in Ashanti. In the morning of Sunday, 26 January 1964, the appellant entered the room of the sixth prosecution witness while the said witness was away at his farm, and took the said witness’s gun which was loaded. When he was questioned by the fifth prosecution witness as to what he was going to do with the gun the appellant said he was going to hunt with it and left the house with it. About the same time the deceased, a farm labourer of one Kwabena Darbo, the first prosecution witness, was threshing corn with the first prosecution witness’s ...