SEVENTEEN-YEARS after he was sentenced
to death as a juvenile by a lower court, the Lagos division of the Court of
Appeal has upturned the court's verdict,discharging and acquitting him of
the murder charge preferred against him.
Williams Owodo, a juvenile at the time of the offence, had spent 17 years on death row until a group-the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) came to his rescue following an appeal lodged at the appellate court on his behalf, challenging the manner he was sentenced to death by the lower court.
Owodo was sentenced to death on December 5, 2003 by a Lagos High Court eight years after his arrest and subsequent detention.
Specifically ,Owodo,who could not believe his acquittal,was arrested on February 1, 1995 alongside four others and bagged a death sentence after eight years of legal battle.
Owodo now 33, was 16 years old at the time the alleged offence was committed in 1995.
At trial,Owodo was linked to a group of young boys who fought and stabbed a boy to death.
To the prosecution ,Owodo was one of the eight other boys who were playing cards in the neighborhood and spread dried cassava flour on the nearby street as a bait to rob people.
This ,he said the accused along with others, with a common intention that: anyone who stepped on the cassava would be challenged, providing them the opportunity to rob such a person of his or her property which included the deceased person.
This,Owodo denied, insisting that although he was playing football with his friends when they saw a crowd watching some people fighting, he later left for his home and was on his way when a police van stopped beside him and was pushed into the van and taken to Ajeromi Police Station.
Scores of others were also raided and arrested in the same circumstance that evening and brought to the police station.
But some of the arrested youths paid money to bail themselves out of the police station,Owodo could not as he had no money with him to pay for his bail, hence to link up with his parents was another tall dream.
However , luck smiled on him when LEDAP took up his case and challenged the judgement of the lower court on appeal.
After a series of adjournments, the higher court unanimously upturned the lower court's judgement and acquitted Owodo of all the charges.
Specifically , the appellate court held that there was no nexus between an eye witness account,who gave evidence linking the deceased's death with the act of the accused, Williams Owodo, saying , the High Court failed woefully to conduct a trial- within -trial to establish correct position of the accused's evidence that he was beaten with a rod and forced to sign the written statement which the lower court relied on to convict and sentence him to death.
Besides , the appellate court gave the lower court a hard knock as it never considered Owodo's age at the time of conviction as it was obvious that the accused person was an under-age,who was ought to have been referred to Juvenile Court for trial.
This,the justices of the Court of Appeal viewed as a miscarriage of justice ,saying the High Court erred in law to have relied on the age of the accused person, Willaims Owodo, as at the time of the trial instead of his age as at the time the incident occurred.
In his response,LEDAP's national cordinator,who doubled as Owodo's lawyer, Mr.Chino Obiagwu said: “again like we said earlier this year following the outcome of the appeal of Olatunji Olaide, this is a case that calls for an in-depth re-evaluation and urgent overhauling of our Criminal Justice System, especially as it relates to the use of capital punishment.
We cannot continue to be sentencing innocent persons to death, only for the appeal court to upturn the judgment after a decade or more when the appellant must have served unlawful sentence and deprivation of his personal liberty in the prison. This is very pathetic in the sense that a juvenile like William in this case, should not have been charged with a capital offence in the first instance.
“Well, it is good enough that Williams was able to write and make his WAEC papers in prison while on death row and is currently studying Co-operative Management at the Kirikiri satellite campus of the National Open University.
“LEDAP uses this medium to call on the Nigeria government to reconsider its stand on the use of capital punishment by abolishing the use of death penalty and replacing same with life imprisonment”.
Williams Owodo, a juvenile at the time of the offence, had spent 17 years on death row until a group-the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) came to his rescue following an appeal lodged at the appellate court on his behalf, challenging the manner he was sentenced to death by the lower court.
Owodo was sentenced to death on December 5, 2003 by a Lagos High Court eight years after his arrest and subsequent detention.
Specifically ,Owodo,who could not believe his acquittal,was arrested on February 1, 1995 alongside four others and bagged a death sentence after eight years of legal battle.
Owodo now 33, was 16 years old at the time the alleged offence was committed in 1995.
At trial,Owodo was linked to a group of young boys who fought and stabbed a boy to death.
To the prosecution ,Owodo was one of the eight other boys who were playing cards in the neighborhood and spread dried cassava flour on the nearby street as a bait to rob people.
This ,he said the accused along with others, with a common intention that: anyone who stepped on the cassava would be challenged, providing them the opportunity to rob such a person of his or her property which included the deceased person.
This,Owodo denied, insisting that although he was playing football with his friends when they saw a crowd watching some people fighting, he later left for his home and was on his way when a police van stopped beside him and was pushed into the van and taken to Ajeromi Police Station.
Scores of others were also raided and arrested in the same circumstance that evening and brought to the police station.
But some of the arrested youths paid money to bail themselves out of the police station,Owodo could not as he had no money with him to pay for his bail, hence to link up with his parents was another tall dream.
However , luck smiled on him when LEDAP took up his case and challenged the judgement of the lower court on appeal.
After a series of adjournments, the higher court unanimously upturned the lower court's judgement and acquitted Owodo of all the charges.
Specifically , the appellate court held that there was no nexus between an eye witness account,who gave evidence linking the deceased's death with the act of the accused, Williams Owodo, saying , the High Court failed woefully to conduct a trial- within -trial to establish correct position of the accused's evidence that he was beaten with a rod and forced to sign the written statement which the lower court relied on to convict and sentence him to death.
Besides , the appellate court gave the lower court a hard knock as it never considered Owodo's age at the time of conviction as it was obvious that the accused person was an under-age,who was ought to have been referred to Juvenile Court for trial.
This,the justices of the Court of Appeal viewed as a miscarriage of justice ,saying the High Court erred in law to have relied on the age of the accused person, Willaims Owodo, as at the time of the trial instead of his age as at the time the incident occurred.
In his response,LEDAP's national cordinator,who doubled as Owodo's lawyer, Mr.Chino Obiagwu said: “again like we said earlier this year following the outcome of the appeal of Olatunji Olaide, this is a case that calls for an in-depth re-evaluation and urgent overhauling of our Criminal Justice System, especially as it relates to the use of capital punishment.
We cannot continue to be sentencing innocent persons to death, only for the appeal court to upturn the judgment after a decade or more when the appellant must have served unlawful sentence and deprivation of his personal liberty in the prison. This is very pathetic in the sense that a juvenile like William in this case, should not have been charged with a capital offence in the first instance.
“Well, it is good enough that Williams was able to write and make his WAEC papers in prison while on death row and is currently studying Co-operative Management at the Kirikiri satellite campus of the National Open University.
“LEDAP uses this medium to call on the Nigeria government to reconsider its stand on the use of capital punishment by abolishing the use of death penalty and replacing same with life imprisonment”.
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