THE STATE vs. LOBI [1961]DLSC1373

Date	1961-11-24
Suit No.
Citation No.	[1961]DLSC1373

VAN LARE JSC

SARKODEE-ADOO JSC

ADUMUA-BOSSMAN JSC

T. E. KWAKU FOR THE APPELLANT

K. DUA SAKYI

WITH HIM SARKODEE FOR THE RESPONDENT (THE STATE)

[1961]DLSC1373
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&nbsp;[SUPREME COURT]

[1961] GLR 696

DATE: 24TH NOVEMBER, 1961.

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COUNSEL:&nbsp;&nbsp;

T.
E. KWAKU FOR THE APPELLANT ,K. DUA SAKYI, WITH HIM SARKODEE FOR THE RESPONDENT
(THE STATE)

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VAN LARE, SARKODEE-ADOO AND
ADUMUA-BOSSMAN, JJ.S.C.

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&nbsp;

Adumua-Bossman, J.S.C. delivered the judgment of the court. [His
lordship narrated the facts and continued:] After what can be described as the
most favourable summing-up in favour of the appellant, in the course of which
the learned judge said, inter alia, that: “For instance, you have to consider
whether a sane person in the circumstances would run amuck and butcher so many
defenceless women and children; if you think not, then your verdict should be
guilty, but insane”, the jury rejected the appellant’s defence of insanity or
insane delusion; and it is their finding that the appellant was sane at the
time of commission of the act which is now challenged as being unreasonable and
incapable of support having regard to the evidence.

After the most anxious and careful examination and consideration
of all the evidence, however, we are of the opinion that the jury had good and
sufficient justification for coming to the conclusion which they did.

In this respect, on the appellant’s own statement to the police
and his explanation to the court, he cannot be said not to have known the
nature or quality of the acts, at the time he was doing them, for it is clear,
as he himself explained, that he knew he was destroying human life because his brothers
or companions were either reported or supposed to have been killed. But most
important and significant perhaps is the circumstance deposed to by Kwasi
Nyamekye, third prosecution witness, that he conversed quite rationally with
the appellant in the bush and that the appellant was rational enough, when he
(Nyamekye) threatened to shoot him down if he did not throw down his cutlass
and surrender.

Having regard to the requirements of section 27 of the Criminal
Code, 1960,1(1) which is identical in terms with section 52 of the former
Criminal Code, Cap. 92(2) providing that a person accused of murder may be
entitled to the special verdict of guilty but insane only:

“(a) if he was prevented, by reason of . . . any mental
derangement or disease affecting the mind, from knowing the nature or
consequences of the act in respect of which he is accused; or

(b) if he did the act in respect of which he is accused under the
influence of an insane delusion of such a nature as to render him, in the
opinion of the jury or of the court, an unfit subject for punishment”,

it does not seem that the appellant’s case is brought within the
requirements of the law. Looking at the matter in the light most favourable to
him that he was under a delusion that his brothers had been killed, he would
not be justified to kill by way of avenging their deaths, as it were. As
pointed out by Granville Sharp, in Kwame Dagarti v. The State:3(3)

“It has been decided in recent cases by this court that the
delusion referred to in the section must be of such a nature that if the
imagined facts were true, they would provide justification for the action taken
as a result of the delusion”.

See also Yini Sheega alias Awuni Frafra v. The State4(4) in which
the delusion was that an individual had administered a noxious drug in a
draught of pito to the appellant with the object of rendering him impotent and
which had resulted in making the appellant impotent (according to him), as a
result of which the appellant shot an arrow at the individual which unfortunately
caught that individual’s infant son and killed him. The court held: “the
appellant was in no legal sense insane or suffering from any form of delusion
that could operate as an excuse for the killing.”

<a name="_gjdgxs"></a>Even so we are satisfied that
in this case the appellant “was in no legal sense insane or suffering from any
form of delusion that could operate as an excuse for the killing”, and we are
unable to sustain or uphold the contention on behalf of the appellant that the
verdict of the jury is unreasonable and cannot be supported having regard to
the evidence. In the result we are obliged to dismiss the appeal.

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