Freedom for two juveniles on death row

With the development, the duo were allowed to go home and reunite with their loved ones after 10 years in prison and five on death row. They were barely 17 years old when they were arrested on 30th September, 2004 on allegations by police at Igando Police Station that they were part of a group […]

With the development, the duo were allowed to go home and reunite with their loved ones after 10 years in prison and five on death row.
They were barely 17 years old when they were arrested on 30th September, 2004 on allegations by police at Igando Police Station that they were part of a group of young men seen by a police informant spending lavishly at a beer parlour, and overheard boasting of their unlawful escapades.
Following the appeal against their conviction and sentence filed in 2011 by LEDAP – Legal Defence and Assistance Project – a panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division unanimously allowed their separate appeals and set aside their conviction and sentence.
The court resolved two out of three  issues raised for determination in the appeal in their favour. In particular, the court found that the evidence of the prosecution witnesses was mere hearsay and that the vital evidence required to prove the charges were not provided by the prosecution. Moreso, at the time of the incident, Mr.Obed and Mr.Otobong were under-aged persons who ought to have been taken to juvenile court rather than a high court.
The justices of the court of appeal decried the high court for not making detailed inquiry into the ages of the appellants.
Under Nigerian law, persons under the age of 17 have diminished criminal responsibility and those under the age of 18 years must be treated as children and only tried at the family or juvenile courts in accordance with the Child Rights Act or Laws. They should not  be sentenced to death.
Incidents of charging and trying juveniles in adult courts are rampant in Nigeria, and there is little or no hesitation with many trial courts sentencing them to death, despite provisions of the law prohibiting sentencing persons under the age of 18, insane persons or pregnant women to death.
In 2008, a joint report by LEDAP and Amnesty International titled, ‘Nigeria: Waiting for the hangman’, that nearly 46 of the 1200 or so death row prisoners in the country’s 10 maximum security prisons could be children at the time the alleged offences were committed and at the time of their convictions. The situation remains the same today. Most of the condemned juveniles have been convicted based on questionable confessional statements obtained by the police upon their arrests.
Commenting on the judgment and  the continued use of death penalty in the country with its high risk of mistaken convictions, Mr. Chino Edmund Obiagwu, counsel to Mr.Obed and Mr.Otobong, said that the  case presents another opportunity for deep soul-searching by our criminal justice leaders and legislators on continued imposition of death sentence in the country with such imperfect criminal justice system, which range from poor police investigation to inefficient prosecution and unduly protracted trial processes.
According to him, nearly seven out of every 10 death penalty appeals that LEDAP has handled in the last two years have resulted in the acquittal of the appellants, suggesting a very high rate of wrongful capital convictions.
He admonished the Nigerian government to reconsider its stand on the use of capital punishment by abolishing the death penalty and replacing same with life imprisonment or other humane alternatives.