A Kaduna State High Court has sentenced six individuals to 21 years in prison for conspiracy and intent to commit culpable homicide after 11- years of trial.
Delivery judgement in the suit number KDH/KAD/88C/14, Justice B.M Balaraba held that the matter had been both complex and controversial.
The defendants were arrested in January 2014 following an alleged attack on the Chief of Jere, Dr. Sa’ad Usman, along with his driver and orderly. Initially, over fifty individuals were arrested, but the number was later reduced to six defendants, as the prosecution was unable to present three of those initially accused in court. A separate trial was held for the remaining three defendants.
The trial experienced numerous delays and administrative challenges, involving five different judges and being restarted de novo three times due to the death or elevation of the presiding judges.
During the trail, the Lead counsel Gloria Mabeiam Ballason, Esq., raised several procedural concerns, including the court’s refusal to consider a bail application until all hearings were complete, a decision the defense argued violated constitutional rights to a fair hearing and the presumption of innocence.
It was reported that the final judgment was delivered with less than an hour’s notice via a WhatsApp message to counsel, and the court registry initially refused to process an application for a timely judgment, claiming that the wording of the “request” for a judgment date was “not courteous or decorous.”
Justice Balarabe found the defendants guilty of criminal conspiracy (five years) and intent to commit culpable homicide (ten years), with the sentences set to run concurrently.
Notably, the court acquitted the defendants of the primary charge of culpable homicide, ruling that the prosecution failed to establish a causal link between the January 2014 incident and Dr. Sa’ad Usman’s death in April 2020.
The defense’s primary objection pertains to the application of the sentence. Although the court acknowledged that the defendants had spent eleven years in custody since 2014, it ordered that the ten-year term start from the date of judgment, November 19, 2025. Consequently, the defendants will serve an additional ten years, leading to a total sentence of 21 years.
Following the verdict, Lead Counsel Gloria Mabeiam Ballason, Esq., criticized the judgment as “against the weight of evidence” and “not supported by law, justice, and fairness.” She argued that imposing 21 years for conspiracy and intent to commit culpable homicide is “not contemplated by law or justice.” She emphasized that the lengthy duration of the trial itself constituted an abuse of constitutional provisions that guarantee timely justice.
The defense intends to appeal on multiple grounds, including the severity of the punishment and the court’s alleged failure to consider crucial evidence, such as the absence of a medical report linking the defendants’ actions to the cause of death of the deceased.
This case, which involves high-profile figures including the deceased, who was the husband of former Minister of Finance Senator Nenadi Usman has become a significant test of the principle of timely and equitable justice within Nigeria’s judicial system.
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