ANGUYAN vs. REPUBLIC

The appellant was convicted by the High Court, Sunyani, for the murder of Yaw Ofori. The prosecution evidence showed that after a dispute connected with a burnt farm and suspected theft of the appellant’s hunting equipment, the deceased went to his farm and was later found dead with multiple wounds. The appellant fled to Burkina Faso, was later arrested, and made a statement to the police admitting that after an encounter with the deceased he took the deceased’s cutlass and slashed him to death, then hid the deceased’s cutlass and radio. At trial, however, he gave a materially different account and sought to rely on self-defence. The Court of Appeal considered whether the trial judge failed to leave self-defence to the jury and whether the evidence supported that defence. Portion of judgment: “He made a statement on 2/7/88... In that statement he said... ‘I quickly picked the deceased’s own cutlass from the ground and... slashed him to death’”; and later, “In his evidence at the trial, the appellant gave essentially a different version of the confrontation.”

On 8 July 1991 the appellant was convicted of the offence of murder by the High Court Sunyani. The facts relied upon by the prosecution are that on 20 February 1988 the deceased, Yaw Ofori, then resident at Amona cottage near Kintampo went to the farm in the company of his son, PW2. They discovered that somebody had set fire to the farm. They saw a hunting gun and a hunting lamp that the deceased suspected belonged to the person who might have set fire to the farm. Later in the afternoon the appellant asked the deceased about the hunting equipment and the deceased denied knowledge of it. The deceased then left the farm in a displeased mood. On the following morning, the deceased left for the farm to see if the fire had extinguished. He took along a cutlass and an Akasanoma radio. When, after some time the deceased did not return, his mother and his brother, PW1, went out to look for him. They found him dead in a path in the farm. He had several wounds on his body. None of the equipmen...