KILLED! Dzigbordi Asigbetse
An Accra High Court has quashed the conviction of a 17-year-old Achimota Senior High School (SHS) student, who shot and killed his colleague, Lily Dzigbordi Asibetse Donkor.
The minor, who was a third-year student of the school, was in September 2017 sentenced by a Juvenile Court to serve three years in a correctional home in Accra.
But following an application for certiorari by the convict’s lawyers, the judgment of the juvenile court was yesterday quashed by the high court, presided over by Justice Kofi Dorgu.
According to the court, the juvenile court erred in passing judgment without paying attention to the Social Enquiry Report on the convict at the time before coming to its decision.
This, according to Justice Dorgu, constitutes a miscarriage of justice contrary to the Juvenile Justice Act 2003.
The court held that the juvenile court ‘rushed’ in passing judgment without taking into consideration the Juvenile Enquiry Report.
The court therefore ordered that the convict be immediately discharged from prison custody.
Application
Lawyers for the convict filed the application for certiorari in November last year, praying the court to quash the judgement of the juvenile court.
The lawyers contended that the trial judge at the time did not have jurisdiction over the case and that he committed a jurisdiction error in passing the judgement.
They argued that the court erred when it allowed the trial of a juvenile to go beyond the six months stipulated by the Juvenile Justice Act 2003 and subsequently went ahead to pass judgement on the matter.
It was also the contention of the lawyers that the juvenile court erred when it ignored the Juvenile Enquiry Report on the minor and went ahead to pass its judgement without taking the report into consideration.
They, therefore, prayed the high court to quash the judgement, which they indicated was against the rights of their client.
A principal state attorney, Frances Mullen Ansah, vehemently challenged the position of the defence team, saying the trial was within the six months’ period.
She also debunked the defence lawyers’ argument that the juvenile court did not have jurisdiction to pass judgement in the matter and thus, prayed the court to dismiss the application.
In its ruling, the court held that the minor was first arraigned before a magistrate court on January 6, 2017 before he was put before the juvenile court in March that same year, which in the view of the court, was a continuation of the trial.
The court therefore was of the view that passing judgement in September, when the prosecution in March indicated that it had only three months left for the trial, was clearly more than the six months stipulated by the law.
This, the court said, was against the rights of the juvenile as provided by the law.
It therefore quashed the judgement of the juvenile court and granted the application for certiorari as filed by the defence team.
Background
The minor, who was then a final-year student of the Achimota Senior High School, was arraigned before a juvenile court, presided over by Bernardine S.A Senoo on the charge of manslaughter.
He was subsequently found guilty of the offence after nine months of trial and was sentenced accordingly.
The convict was said to have brought out his father’s gun from under a bed with intent to shoot into the air, but ended up killing his friend, Lily Donkor, who was a third-year student at the same school.
Lily Dzigbordi Asibetse Donkor, a resident of Cantonments, was killed on January 4, 2017 at about 2pm when she visited her friend, the convict, in his house at Community 8, Tema.
The convict, in an attempt to fire his father’s gun into the air, mistakenly shot the final-year friend in the abdomen.
She was quickly rushed to the Port Clinic in Tema by a neighbour, Gifty Billy, who heard the gunshot and rushed to the scene.
The victim was referred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra as a result of the severity of the gunshot, but she died on admission.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak