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Another pro bono case involved a po- lice officer and we took this on at the last level of appellate courts, which is the Supreme Court. The trial had been handled by somebody else, as well as the appeal. And the correctional officers reached out to us to say this gentleman wants to change his lawyers because he has no confidence in their ability and this is his last chance. I went to the pris- on to have a chat with him and took it on.
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The victim in this case was a little girl who, at the time, was aged eight years old. She was on her way back from school when a stranger, a male adult aged about thirty years old, summoned her and instructed her to return a bottle of Coca-Cola to a street vendor and bring back his change. Now, Nigerian children, wrongly, in my view, are taught to be obedient and respectful to all elders without exception. So the little girl, being a good Nigerian child, obeyed. Trotted off with a bottle, returned with the change, at which point the stranger seized her, carried her off into a nearby bush, and raped her.
Fast forward two years later and I have to put this now ten year old child on the witness stand where she was cross-examined like an adult. She was asked long and complex questions. She was asked to define rape. She was asked if she had a boyfriend, to which she responded in the affirmative. In re-exam- ination, I asked how old her boyfriend was and she said he’s seven years old. The boyfriend turned out to be a family
friend and her younger brother’s best friend.
The rapist was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison with hard labor. The judge said to him, “Sadly, this is your first offense and so I cannot give you the maximum penalty but you do not belong in human society.” Conducting that trial pro bono, my firm had to cover all expenses, including the transport fare of the investigating police officer, or IP as we call them, to assure that he attended to give his evidence and that the trial could proceed expeditiously.
The officer and his partner were on patrol duty, chasing suspected armed robbers who shot at them and they shot back. One of the chaps in the car sustained a gunshot injury; he died a few months later. And my police officer was arrested by his colleagues, prosecuted, and sentenced to death for murder. We appealed to the Supreme Court, we put forward our ar- guments, and the Supreme Court agreed that the appellant who was, like I said, a police officer, acted recklessly on the day of the incident. But the result was the prosecution did not present a compelling case that could have led to the sentencing of the appellant to death; and did not prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The court then reduced the sentence to 25 years in prison. The appellant had, by this time, already spent 15 years in prison and, therefore, was released shortly thereafter.
A third case involved a lady called Joy. She had been accused of killing her husband and convicted of murder. Summary of the facts: Joy and her hus- band lived in – I wish I could show you this little accommodation – but it’s one room where they cook, sleep, and eat. Their entire life is lived in a one room shanty.
They share a latrine, which is a pit toilet, and in order to clean that - because you can’t flush it - they buy acid and pour it down the pit. She had acid in a bottle in that room, along with palm oil and various other things. And her husband, who was physically abusive, in the middle of the night gets a phone call from his girlfriend, wakes Joy up, and begins to beat her up. He says “I need you to leave this house because I don’t want to stay married to you anymore.” Then, he pulls a knife. There in darkness, because they have no electricity, she reaches for whatever she could to hit him and get him away from her. It was the bottle of acid that she grabbed. She hit him and he falls back screaming. She grabs her baby, and she runs.
But she comes back because he’s still screaming and she and the neighbors take him to hospital. In any case, he was in hospital for about twenty-eight days before he died. Police interviewed him on the third day and from the trial records, he had gauze around his head; no indication of any other phys- ical injury. A day before he died, he had surgery; no information as to what the surgery was about. And then he died the next day.