The Court of Appeal completely embarrassed the A-G Srem-Sai...

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Viewers, something has happened in the criminal jurisprudence of Ghana today, huh?

[00:00:05]That has never happened before. Never never happened. I'm not exaggerating. It's never never happened before.

[00:00:12]So, in criminal jurisprudence one of the most important things is that an accused person has the the the case against the accused person has the highest standard of proof in criminal jurisprudence. The highest standard of proof is to establish something beyond reasonable doubt.

[00:00:32]Sometimes when we say these people ask that people think that every case is to be established beyond reasonable doubt.

[00:00:38]No. In criminal processes the case against the accused person, the standard of establishing it as far as what the court is looking at the standard is that you have to establish it beyond any reasonable doubt. That means you have to establish it 100%. If you say Paul Adom Otchere has done X, you have to establish it 100%. If a doubt is raised so that your ability to establish it is dropped from 100 to 99% the accused is free. You have not been able to establish the case against the accused.

[00:01:06]When you bring an accused person, they are not asking you to establish the case 40%, 50%, 60%. They want you to establish 101%. That is beyond any reasonable doubt. That's how it works.

[00:01:19]That is the law that we have inherited from Magna Carta 1216 AD. Magna Carta, which is the human rights bill, the main human Magna Carta is in Latin. The main human rights bill is called the Magna Carta. You can Google it. Those people who like to Google, Gen Z people, Google m a g n a Magna Carta. It's a bill of rights or you can Google the bill of rights, it will come. It was in 1215. Maybe I'm getting 12, maybe it's 1237, maybe it's 1220 something, but it's 12 something.

[00:01:48]Way back at the time Oxford University was established, this principle was established in criminal jurisprudence that where an accused person is being accused, the standard of proof should be high.

[00:02:00]1215.

[00:02:01]Yes.

[00:02:02]It's 1215, Magna Carta 1215. I read it way back in pre-sec government, when we're doing government, A-level government. So, sorry, I'm old, so when I say A-level, I know people can relate to it. A-level government, Magna Carta.

[00:02:12]We used to joke with it. They were our nicknames. Some of the boys we called them Magna Carta because they would chew the thing the whole night. Viewers, we learned, too. We learned, we learned, and we are happy that we did. So, Magna Carta is 1215 BC, yeah?

[00:02:24]And it was It established the Bill of Rights.

[00:02:27]Okay. So, in that Bill of Rights, it is guaranteed that an accused person should be allowed to defend himself with everything that he wants to defend himself with.

[00:02:41]So, if an accused person says that the person who knows the matter that I have to tell the court is Mr. Paul Adom Otchere. He lives in London, and he's not able to find money to come.

[00:02:53]The The prosecution system The court system would have to find money to bring Paul Adom Otchere down for him to come and say the thing that accused person says, "It is only Paul Adom Otchere who knows this thing, and it is only him who can give this information to the court.

[00:03:06]If the court gets this information, they will know that I'm innocent." If that happens, the court, it is it is an obligation on the court to organize for the said Paul Adom Otchere to come from England to come and testify.

[00:03:20]That is the extent to which the law goes to protect the the individual. Okay, they're giving me this clue. It means that I'm spending too much time on the introduction. I'll move on very quickly.

[00:03:31]So, this is the matter.

[00:03:33]A teacher comes to court and says that I want a discovery.

[00:03:41]So, there's an Because of that Because of this right that is embedded in Magna Carta, which runs through all criminal jurisprudence, because of that right When I say jurisprudence, I mean the body of legal theory that governs criminal prosecution. That's what jurisprudence means. You can Google that as well. Jurisprudence is a Latin word again. Juris means law, prudence means prudence, yeah? Okay. All right. So, that's the that's because of that, the law has granted an application called discovery.

[00:04:16]Now, the application called discovery can be applied by defense counsel, lawyers for the defense. That application can be applied by them if they feel that the material that they will use to defend themselves, it is in the possession of the accused person or the government. So, for instance, uh X is being prosecuted, like Kwabena Edusei is being prosecuted.

[00:04:38]And then, they they've seized his passport. So, his passport is at the CID.

[00:04:43]And then, he says that I need the passport to be able to show you not even that that's not a good example. Kwabena Edusei is being prosecuted, and he says that on this matter, Sarfo Safo cannot speak about it as Deputy Attorney General because that time, he was in America.

[00:04:58]And then, they say you you say, "Yeah, Deputy Attorney General, you were not here. You were in America. So, why are you speaking as if you were here?" He says, "I was here." They say, "No, you were not here. You're lying."

[00:05:05]Now, his passport is with him. It's not with me. It's with him.

[00:05:09]Now, the the the process of discovery allows the accused person, the lawyer for the accused person, to apply for discovery and tell the court that compel Sarfo Safo to bring his own passport to the court that we can ascertain this matter. That's what discovery is about.

[00:05:23]So, discovery recognizes that the accused person may need some material that is in the custody of the prosecution who are more powerful than the accused person, and therefore, the prosecution cannot does not have the power to go and search accused person's house. They don't have the police.

[00:05:39]The the sorry, the defense does not have the power to search the prosecution's house. The defense does not have police.

[00:05:44]They don't have immigration. They don't have CID. They don't have airports. They don't have anything. They just have themselves and the law. So, the the rule of discovery is that where the defense counsel so emasculated by their role as defense and their hands are cut off, that's what I mean by emasculated, they can apply to the court and tell the court that this material, it is in the hands of the prosecution, they should bring it.

[00:06:09]Because the prosecution will now be asked to bring something from within their fold that will be used to challenge their own case. So, they may be resistant in doing so. So, the legal system uh brings about the rule of discovery that counsel can apply for discovery that this person should bring it so that we use against against him.

[00:06:29]With that background, let's look at the meaning of discovery and I'll show you what has happened in the court of appeal today. Black's Law Dictionary 4th Edition says discovery means This means the disclosure by a party of facts, titles, documents, or other things which are in his exclusive knowledge or possession and which are necessary to the party seeking the discovery as part of a cause or action pending or to be brought in another court or as evidence of his right or title in such proceedings. It's written for lawyers, so so don't worry about the repetition and the punctuation is that that are made to settle everything. So, that's discovery.

[00:07:08]The learned counsel for Kwabena Dwamena Adjei Attah was shocked to the bone and marrow when he found out that a a bank statement, and you know this a company Dwamena Attah is about banks, a bank statement has been brought to the court by prosecutor Srem Sai. He brought a bank statement to the court.

[00:07:30]When he brought the bank statement, about 70 pages of the bank statement had been taken out.

[00:07:37]And he brings bank statement of only page two to the court.

[00:07:42]And then Attah and says, "Ah, but I've not seen some of these before.

[00:07:45]WHAT'S THE MEANING OF THIS?

[00:07:46]WHERE IS THE REST OF THE BANK STATEMENT?

[00:07:49]Because we need the rest of the bank statement to make our case that whatever allegation you are making is unfounded.

[00:07:56]So long as you can produce the entire bank statement, we will show the court Serame says, "I can't give you the entire How do you bring a bank statement from Advantage company company of my company? You publish their banks. You know that he's he's the owner. He has a He also has a bank statement. But you publish the bank statements in the court and you publish only small and leave the rest. I mean, viewers, how how callous can people be?

[00:08:22]How wicked? You want to buy a false jail the guy.

[00:08:26]And you think you have the courts.

[00:08:28]By force, they want to jail him.

[00:08:30]Because, viewers, how do you explain this thing? And that's why it was useful for an application to go for this trial to be shown on television. As for this Khama Do Boifela, it pains me that it's not on TV. It should have been on TV for everybody to see the disgrace and the embarrassment that is happening to our local jurisprudence. It should have been on TV for everybody to see. How do you say that an accused person cannot be entitled to a bank statement, the full bank statement, but you only want to bring two pages?

[00:08:58]Ata was beside himself with anger.

[00:09:00]The judge said Ata can go on with the case. He doesn't need those bank statements. That's the judge's opinion. Ata was outraged. He filed to the court of appeal. This is a high court trial. He goes to the court of appeal where three judges are looking at it. And again, that's how the jurisprudence is being set up. One judge at the high court, three judges at the court of appeal. So if you don't like what the high court judge has said, there'll be three other senior colleagues of his to look at it for you.

[00:09:25]And if they look at it and they agree with him, then you know that you are getting out. If they look at it and they disagree with him, the Supreme Court is still available. But the court of appeal is three judges all the time, three judges. So it may be all three saying the same thing or two versus one. A 2-1 or a 3-0 signifies a victory for the applicant who's gone to the court of appeal.

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