BOAMAH vs. THE STATE [1964]DLSC1878

Date	1964-02-29
Suit No.
Citation No.	[1964]DLSC1878

ADUMUA-BOSSMAN JSC

OLLENNU JSC

BLAY J.S.C.

W. N. ADUMUA-BOSSMAN JNR. FOR THE APPELLANT.

D. F. ANNAN SENIOR STATE ATTORNEY FOR THE RESPONDENT.

[1964]DLSC1878
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													<main id="main" class="content" style="min-height: 60rem" >BOAMAH <o:p></o:p>vs. <o:p></o:p>THE STATE <o:p></o:p>[SUPREME COURT]<o:p></o:p>[1964] GLR 112<o:p></o:p><div style="mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.5pt;
padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">

DATE:
29 FEBRUARY 1964.<o:p></o:p>

</div>COUNSEL:&nbsp;&nbsp; <o:p></o:p><div style="mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.5pt;
padding:0in 0in 0in 0in">

W. N. ADUMUA-BOSSMAN, JNR. FOR THE APPELLANT.<o:p></o:p>

D. F. ANNAN, SENIOR STATE ATTORNEY, FOR THE
RESPONDENT.<o:p></o:p>

</div>CORAM:
<o:p></o:p><div style="mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.5pt;
padding:0in 0in 0in 0in">

ADUMUA-BOSSMAN, OLLENNU AND BLAY
JJ.S.C.<o:p></o:p>

</div><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>JUDGMENT OF OLLENNU J.S.C.<o:p></o:p>Ollennu
J.S.C. delivered the judgment of the court. The appellant was convicted of
murder by the High Court, Kumasi, upon the verdict of a jury. The victim of the
offence was one Akua Nyarko a wife of the appellant. There are three issues of
the marriage, the last of whom was three months old at the date of the offence,
which was 22 January 1963.<o:p></o:p>There is
no dispute that the deceased died from multiple wounds inflicted upon her by
the appellant. The appellant was a teacher at the Catholic School, Nintin,
Mampong, Ashanti.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>The
version of the prosecution as to the circumstances in which the said fatal
wounds were inflicted is briefly as follows: differences had arisen between the
appellant and the deceased, caused by the failure of the appellant to maintain
the wife and the children; the matter appeared to have come to a head when the
deceased gave birth to the last child and the appellant failed to provide her
with the gifts and necessaries, which by custom, a husband should give to his
wife when he gets a new baby. Complaints by the deceased in this regard,
against the appellant, were arbitrated upon by the catechist in charge of the
Roman Catholic Church of Nintin, Mampong, Ashanti, the church to which the
appellant and his wife belonged. The award of the arbitration was against the
appellant; it directed, inter alia, that the appellant should pacify the wife
with an amount of six pounds (£G6).<o:p></o:p>

In the
evening of the fateful day, at about 9 p.m., the appellant went to the house of
his parents-in-law, where the deceased had gone to live in consequence of the
differences, and invited the deceased to spend the night with him in his house;
the deceased refused to go saying that until the appellant paid the
pacification fee of six pounds (£G6) she would not sleep with him. Thereupon
the appellant picked up the three months’ old child who was then lying on a mat
in a room and carried it away to his house. He returned a short time afterwards
and took away the second also. The deceased, her mother the first prosecution
witness and two gentlemen they had invited, one of them also a teacher teaching
in the same school as the appellant, went to the house of the appellant to
collect the three months’ old child; the first prosecution witness went into
the house while the rest of the party waited outside; she came out with the
child, and as the party was moving away the appellant appeared from a lane, got
hold of the hand of the child and began to pull it; he stopped when the two
gentlemen pleaded with him; he then left the child and disappeared into the
lane. The two men thereafter separated from the two women to go to their
respective houses. As the first prosecution witness and the deceased were going
along, the deceased leading with a hurricane lantern, and the first prosecution
witness following with the child, the appellant suddenly appeared on the scene
with a cutlass, and with it inflicted extensively serious injuries on her head,
her hands and other parts of her body, almost completely amputating the right
hand at a point four inches above the wrist. The appellant then ran away,
throwing away the cutlass; his sister’s husband the fifth prosecution witness
who saw the cutlass thrown away, picked it up, and later handed it over to the
police.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>The
defendant gave two accounts of the incident; the first version is contained in
the caution statement he made to the police when charged with the offence; the
second is contained in the statement he made to the committing magistrate at
the preliminary hearing, and in the evidence he gave at his trial. The first
version amounts to a defence of insanity; it is, in the appellant’s own words,
as follows:<o:p></o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:5.0pt;
margin-left:.5in;text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;border:none;mso-padding-alt:
31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt;mso-border-shadow:yes">“I admit
that the incident was caused by me but that I did not know what I was doing
actually, it was after I had finished before I realised that I had sinned
against God and human that is to say that I had split the blood of a human, a
person with whom I am one in body and in spirit, named Agnes Akua Nyarko. I
cannot say what actually happened before this incident occurred but the only
thing I saw was that I had wounded her with a cutlass.”<o:p></o:p><sp</main>