Youth activist Ivan Kyei Innocent has criticised the prosecution’s preparation of the Sedina Tamakloe case, saying errors in the charge sheet contributed to the outcome at the Court of Appeal.
Kyei said his review of the appellate court’s judgment left him convinced that the prosecution had not met the standard expected in a criminal trial.
“Somebody did a poor job,” he said on Joy Prime.
His criticism focused not only on the evidence presented in the case but also on the way the charges against the accused were drafted. He argued that the prosecution’s handling of the case contained avoidable mistakes which weakened its presentation before the court.
According to Kyei, Sedina Tamakloe was charged with offences falling under almost seven categories. However, he said prosecutors went on to prepare nearly 78 separate charges.
“An accused person has been charged on almost seven categories of offences. Then you come back to draft almost 78 charges,” he said.
Kyei said the Court of Appeal’s judgment drew attention to problems within the charge sheet, including errors in the numbering of the counts. He argued that the mistakes suggested the charges had been prepared in haste.
“Because people were in haste, even the numbering was wrong and the judge dealt with it. They jumped from 49 to 52,” he stated.
The issue was discussed by the appellate court in its judgment. Kyei said the fact that the court addressed the numbering in detail demonstrated the extent of the shortcomings in the prosecution’s preparation.
He argued that the judgment did more than address the immediate legal issues surrounding the case. In his view, the attention given to the charge sheet also exposed weaknesses in the way the prosecution had organised and presented its case.
“The judge deliberately took his time to discuss that just to give you a notion of the bad job that was done,” Ivan Kyei Innocent said.
Kyei’s assessment is that the prosecution’s difficulties were not limited to one isolated error. He pointed to the number of charges, the multiple categories of alleged offences and the inconsistencies in their numbering as parts of a wider problem in the case’s preparation.
His comments came in response to the Court of Appeal judgment in the Sedina Tamakloe case. He said the court’s treatment of the charge sheet was significant because it showed that procedural details, as well as the evidence itself, were central to the outcome.
The youth activist maintained that the prosecution’s performance fell short of what is required in a criminal trial. He said the mistakes identified in the judgment offered an indication of the poor standard of work that had gone into the case.
“The judge deliberately took his time to discuss that just to give you a notion of the bad job that was done,” Ivan Kyei Innocent said.
