Police Corporal To Die By Hanging

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The Court of Appeal in Jos on Tuesday upheld a death sentence on a 25-year-old  police corporal, Emmanuel Ochiba, for causing the death of Godwin Momoh on Sept. 12, 2001, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.

Delivering judgment in the appeal in which the convict sought to upturn an earlier ruling by a Jos High Court, the presiding judge, Justice Bode Vivors, held that the appellant actually committed the offence.

Vivors affirmed that the police corporal should die by hanging.

“By committing that offence, the convict has run foul of a section of the Penal Code,’’ he ruled.

According to him, the court was convinced “beyond reasonable doubt’’ that the convict had committed culpable homicide punishable with death.

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He disclosed that the convict had failed to provide any evidence that exonerated him from the crime.

The judge said that the court had relied heavily on the evidence given by the star witness, Mr Jonathan Mawiyau, a lawyer, who was together with the deceased when the policeman shot him on the chest.

Vivors said that the lower court was right to depend on the evidence of one witness in a murder or rape case, adding that the appellant was in agreement with doctors’ report that indicated that the deceased was shot at a “close range’’.

Mawiyau had told the court that the convict shot his victim on the chest without any provocation, even after complying with his instruction to kneel down and identify himself.

“As a temple of justice, the court will not spare any person who takes the laws into his hands,’’ he ruled.

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