YAKUBU V. STATE (2025) 12 NWLR (PT. 2000) 233 ON EFFECT OF FAILURE OF TRIAL COURT TO RECORD USE OF INTERPRETER IN SUBSEQUENT TRIAL DAYS WHERE RECORDS USE OF AT…
Read More
AMEYI SHAYE. V. COMMISSIONER OF POLICE (2025) 10 NWLR (Pt. 1995) 113. On Whether party fully represented in court can complain of lack of fair hearing because of absence of…
STATE V. ARDO (2025) 13 NWLR (Pt. 2002) 303 ON WHAT IS AN ARRAIGNMENT AND PURPOSE OF Arraignment is a very important initial step in the trial of a person…
BAWA DADA & ORS V TANKO YANDAYI & ANOR (2025) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1993) 517 ON APPLICATION OF DOCTRINE OF RED PENCIL RULE The doctrine of red pencil rule, which…
STATE V. ARDO (2025) 13 NWLR (Pt. 2002) 303 ON WHAT IS JOINT TRIAL AND DUTY ON PROSECUTION THEREIN When more than one accused persons are charged for the same…
There is a difference between when an accused person would recant the voluntariness of his confessional statement, on the ground of either torture, duress or promise from a person in position of authority, and where the accused deny making any confessional statement at all. In the former scenario, the court is duty bound to conduct a trial-within-trial to ascertain the voluntariness of the statement, but in the latter case the court can admit the statement and determine the weight attachable to it after subjecting it to the test to determine its veracity.
In order to rely on the defence of self-defence, an accused person has to show by evidence that his life was so much endangered by the act of the deceased that the only means of escape from imminent death was to kill the deceased. The defence is not available to an accused person if his defensive measures to protect himself are out of proportion with the danger which he faced. Put in another way, the defence of self-defence is a child of necessity.
A re-trial order should not be used as a tool to assist the prosecution that has failed to prove its case. In the instant case, having found that after a full-scale trial the respondent was unable to prove its case against the appellant, the decision of the Court of Appeal ordering a retrial would have resulted in subjecting the appellant to another harrowing experience of a second criminal trial. Furthermore, the circumstances of the case would render it oppressive to try the appellant a second time and allow the respondent an opportunity to fine-tune its case and get a ‘second bite at the cherry’.
In the offence of rape, penetration is the most vital and essential ingredient. The degree of penetration or its duration is immaterial. In this case, PW2 gave unchallenged evidence of penetration, and her evidence was corroborated by the evidence of PW1 and PW3. Therefore, the findings of the Court of Appeal that there was penetration and that the evidence of the prosecutrix was corroborated are impregnable. [Natasha v. State (2017) 18 NWLR (Pt. 1396) 38 referred to.] (Pp. 529, paras. E-H; 532, paras. A-B).
By virtue of sections 15(4) and 17(2) of the ACJA, a duty is imposed on public functionaries (police officers and other officers of any law enforcement agency established by an Act of the National Assembly and this includes the EFCC) to record electronically on retrievable video compact disc or such other audio visual means, the confessional statements of a suspect and to take statements of suspects in the present of the person(s) set out in section 17(2).