Asabke Alangdi
Asabke Alangdi, a lorry station manager who was last week sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of Upper East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Adams Mahama, has filed a notice of appeal against the court’s decision.
He was convicted and sentenced to death by an Accra High Court presided over by Justice Afua Merley Wood, a Justice of the Court of Appeal sitting as an additional High Court judge after a seven-member jury unanimously found him guilty of conspiring to murder the deceased by pouring acid on him in May 2015.
His co-accused, Gregory Afoko, who according to the prosecution he conspired with, is facing a retrial following a hung jury of 4:3 verdict on the same count of conspiracy to commit murder.
Andrew Vortia, counsel for Asabke Alangdi, in a notice of appeal filed at the court of appeal argues that the trial court presided over by Justice Afua Merley Wood failed to adequately direct the jury on the offence of conspiracy in the summing up leading to the jury’s guilty verdict.
“The trial judge failed to adequately direct the jury on the offence of conspiracy in the summing up leading to misdirection and conviction of the 2nd accused/appellant. The conviction of the 2nd accused/appellant is erroneous and same is not supported by the evidence adduced at the trial,” the notice avers.
The appeal is, therefore, urging the Court of Appeal to set aside the entire conviction and sentencing. Gregory Afoko and Asabke Alangdi were before the court on two counts of conspiracy to commit crime and murder, for allegedly pouring acid on Adams Mahama in May 2015, leading to him suffering severe bodily burns and died the next day while on admission at the Bolgatanga Municipal Hospital.
Justice Merley Wood, took four hours to sum up the evidence in the trial to members of the jury, explaining the position of the law as well as the ingredients that needed to be proved by the prosecution.
The jury retired and returned after 38 minutes of deliberation and delivered a verdict that had many people in the courtroom totally surprised, if not confused.
The jury, in a 4:3 majority decision, found Gregory Afoko not guilty on conspiracy to commit murder charge and by another 4:3 majority decision found him not guilty of the substantive charge of murder.
The jury, however, in a unanimous decision returned a guilty verdict on Asabke on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder but by a 4:3 majority returned a not guilty verdict on the substantive charge of murder.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak