Judgment
AMINA ADAMU AUGIE, J.S.C. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): After a trial in which the Prosecution called four Witnesses, and the Appellant testified in his own defence, the Sokoto State High Court found the Appellant guilty as charged for causing the death of “Abubakar Magaji by hitting him with a stick on his head with knowledge that death will be a probable consequence!
He was, accordingly, convicted and sentenced to death for the offence of culpable homicide punishable with death. He appealed to the Court below, wherein he complained inter alia that the trial Court erred in law when it relied on his extra-judicial statement, which did not meet the requirement of the law, as laid down in Utuyorome V. State (2010) 43 WRN 162. But, in its judgment, delivered on 21/2/2017, the Court below held that “his appeal is moribund and lacks merit, and it is accordingly dismissed.
The judgment of the High Court of Justice sitting at Sokoto and delivered on 28/4/2015 – – is hereby affirmed”.
Dissatisfied, the Appellant appealed to this Court with a Notice of Appeal containing three Grounds of Appeal. He distilled three Issues for Determination from the three Grounds of Appeal in his Brief of Argument, and the Issues are: a. Whether the learned Justices erred in law when they disregarded the already laid down principles of law as laid down in Utuyorome V. State (2010) 43 WRN 162, in convicting and sentencing the Appellant. b.
Whether the learned Justices erred in law when they relied on the extra-judicial Statement of the Appellant, which does not meet the requirement of law as laid down in the case of Utuyorome V. State (2010) 43 WRN 162, in convicting and sentencing the Appellant. c. Whether the judgment is not against the weight of evidence.
The Respondent distilled a “lone Issue” from the three Grounds of Appeal and that is “whether the Court below was right to have upheld the conviction of the Appellant”, with the focus being on the “proprietary of the value placed on the extra-judicial statement of the Appellant by the trial Court, which was confirmed by the Court below”.
Nonetheless, it also made the argument in its Brief that – “The Grounds of Appeal in this appeal is virtually not an appeal against the judicial exercise of the Court below because they are nothing but repetition of Grounds of Appeal against the judgment of the trial Court.”
