CaseLaw
Olatunde V. OAU (1998) CLR 5(h) (SC)
Judgement delivered on December 18th 2020
Brief
Facts
The brief facts of the case against the appellant and the others is that on the 19th May, 2011 the group, while driving in a Honda car with registration number Kwara AH 195 FUF, were flagged down by a team of SARS police officers along Airport Road Ilorin. They refused to stop. The patrol team pursued and arrested the appellant. His co-travelers in the vehicle had escaped arrest. In the course of investigation, the appellant and Fahd Kamaldeen, his co-accused, made confessional statements all of which were tendered after a trial within trial had been conducted following the objection raised against their voluntariness.
Appellant's confessional statements, tendered and admitted through PW17, are marked Exhibits N and O.
PW4 is the owner of Exhibit E, the Nokia handset, she told the trial Court she had been dispossessed of at the Peculiar Grace supermarket by the appellant and his co-accused. Exhibit E was recovered in the Honda vehicle driven by the appellant on the day of his arrest by the SARS patrol team.
PW4, PW5, PW6, PW9, PW10 and PW13, all eye witnesses to some of the robberies and the killing of Mr. Basil, fixed the appellant to the venue of the respective offence as a participant.
Appellant and his co-accused, were further identified at an identification parade by their victims who had variously, before appellant's arrest, reported their being robbed. The identification parade took place at the SARS police office.
The appellant, who has a bad leg and limps, gave evidence in his own defence. He disputed the prosecution's assertion that the injury that caused his bad leg was sustained in the course of one of the armed robberies he is convicted for. Instead, he insists, a motor cycle accident was the cause of the bad leg; that he never refused to stop on the day of his arrest when the police patrol team flagged him to; that he was never a member of any robbery gang or had had anything to do with any of the prosecution witnesses.
In the trial Court's judgment delivered on the 16/9/2014, the appellant was discharged and acquitted in respect of counts 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 and 13 of the charge which the prosecution was held not to have proved beyond reasonable doubt. The Court however convicted and sentenced the appellant under counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11 for the conspiracy and robberies at Peculiar Grace supermarket, Food and Nut supermarket, a sister agency and the killing of Mr. Basil, the owner of the former, in the course of the robbery.
Dissatisfied, the appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, hereinafter referred to as the lower Court. The dismissal of the appeal and the affirmation of appellant's conviction and sentence by the trial Court explains his further appeal to this Court.