The Court of Appeal has acquitted and dismissed a businessman who was unfairly imprisoned for 19 years for a crime that prosecution could not establish he committed.
The court unanimously decided that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, and that the trial judge entirely misinterpreted the evidence before her, including stating that the accused had pleaded guilty to the crime although her own records revealed the accused had pleaded not guilty, necessitating a full trial.
Yaw Appiah, a businessman, and five others were tried in the High Court for a 2006 robbery in Teshie Nungua.
Richard Kwakye, his wife Theresa Kwakye, and their children were returning home from seeing off a relative at the airport when the heist took place.
The bandits, armed with machetes and other instruments, stole their cell phones as well as cedi and dollar bills.
Prosecutors claim they phoned the numbers of some of the phones taken by the robbers, and the responses helped them find Yaw Appiah and others in various Accra areas.
The other convicts identified Yaw Appiah as one of those involved in the heist.
The High Court sentenced him to 45 years in prison after concluding that there was significant circumstantial evidence linking him to the heist. His sentence began in June 2011.
His lawyers recently requested leave from the Court of Appeal to dispute the verdict, as the period for appeal had passed. The court granted this request.
The lawyers informed the court that no eyewitness recognised Yaw Appiah as one of the robbers.
They further pointed out that the High Court said that the businessman pleaded guilty to the charge, despite the fact that the court’s records clearly revealed a not guilty plea, which resulted in a full trial.
State prosecutors agreed that Yaw Appiah may not have participated in the heist. They also admitted that the judge’s claim that he had pleaded guilty was incorrect and an oversight.
They also agreed that the trial judge falsely asserted that Yaw Appiah was recognised by one of the robbery victims.
They found that the evidence presented was insufficient and did not link the accused person to the crime.
After reviewing the evidence, the Court of Appeal determined that none of the robbery victims had identified Yaw Appiah.
The Court stated that when investigators questioned Yaw Appiah about the phone calls and claims made by one of the inmates, he firmly denied any involvement.
The court stated that an accused’s confession cannot be used to bind a co-accused since the confessor may be attempting to shift attention away from his own unlawful activity.
“Anything uttered by any of the co-accused persons against appellant, as long as appellant refused to recognise the truth of that statement, was clearly not binding on the appellant, and no reasonable inference could be drawn. “The evidence on record had not met the threshold of reasonable doubt to justify the appellant’s conviction,” the court concluded.
The court declared the following on the High Court Judge’s ruling:
“The trial judge fundamentally misinterpreted the evidence presented by the prosecution. If the appellant’s evidence had been considered, he would not have had to present his defence.
The court stated that Yaw Appiah’s imprisonment since 2006 for a crime for which there was no evidence was a tragedy. It thus vacated the conviction and punishment.