{"id":24702,"date":"2020-02-20T17:26:33","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=24702"},"modified":"2020-02-20T17:26:33","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:26:33","slug":"husband-killer-maryam-sanda-asks-appeal-court-to-quash-her-death-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=24702","title":{"rendered":"Husband Killer, Maryam Sanda Asks Appeal Court To Quash Her Death Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Yemi Oyeyemi<\/strong>, Abuja.
\nAn Abuja based house-wife, Maryam Sanda, sentenced to death for killing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, has asked the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division to void and set aside the death sentence pronounced on her by an Abuja high court.
\nShe was sentenced to death by hanging last month by Justice Yusuf Halilu of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory.
\nIn het appeal against the death sentence, the convict claimed that the trial judge was tainted by bias and prejudices leading to the denial of her right to fair hearing and consequent conviction.
\nShe averred that the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence despite the reasonable doubt created by evidence of witnesses, lack of confessional statement, absence of murder weapon, lack of corroboration of evidence by two witnesses and lack of autopsy report to determine the true cause of her husband\u2019s death.
\nIn the notice of appeal predicated on twenty grounds and filed by her counsel Rickey Tarfa (SAN), Maryam Sanda said the judgment of the trial court was completely \u201ca miscarriage of justice.\u201d
\nShe pointed to the failure of the trial judge to rule on her preliminary objection challenging the charge preferred against her and the jurisdiction of the court as evidence of bias and a denial of her right to fair hearing as constitutionally guaranteed.
\nThe appellant submitted that \u201cthe trial judge erred in law when having taken arguments on her preliminary objection to the validity of the charge on the 19th of March, 2018 failed to rule on it at the conclusion of trial or at any other time.
\nAccording to her legal team, \u201cthe trial judge exhibited bias against the defendant in not ruling one way or the other on the said motion challenging his jurisdiction to entertain the charge\u201d and \u201ctherefore fundamentally breached the right to fair hearing of the defendant”.
\nIn ground 2, the appellant contended that the trial judge erred and misdirected himself by usurping the role of the police when he assumed the duty of an Investigating Police Officer (IPO).
\nIn the said page, Justice Halilu had said \u201cI wish to state that I have a duty thrust upon me to investigate and discover what will satisfy the interest and demands of justice.\u201d
\nThe appellant submitted that the wrongful assumption of the role of an IPO made \u201cthe trial judge failed to restrict himself to the evidence adduced before the court\u201d and instead went fishing for evidence outside those that were brought before the court.
\nShe insisted that while \u201cthe duty of investigation is the constitutional preserve of the police, the constitutional duty of a trial court is to assess the credible evidence before it and reach a decision based on its assessment.\u201d
\nThe convict argued that \u201cthe court’s usurpation of the duty of the police by taking it upon itself to investigate and discover, negatively coloured its assessment of the available evidence and resulted in it reaching an unjust decision contrary to the evidence before it.\u201d
\nIn ground 5, the appellant argued that \u201cthe trial judge erred in law and misdirected himself on the facts when he applied the doctrine of last seen and held that the appellant was the person last seen with the deceased and thus bears the full responsibility for the death of the deceased, and thereby occasioned a miscarriage of justice.\u201d
\nAccording to the particulars of error in support of ground 5, \u201cthere is no evidence before the trial judge that the defendant was the last person who saw the deceased alive\u201d since prosecution witness in his evidence before the trial judge stated that he was called by the deceased, he saw the deceased and asked the deceased what was the problem.\u201d
\nShe added that the statement of Sadiya Aminu, tendered before the trial court (who was initially charged as 4th defendant in the amended charge) also confirmed that the deceased was alive though injured when she saw him.
\nIt was averred that \u201cthe circumstantial evidence which the trial court relied upon in its application of the last seen doctrine does not lead to the conclusion that the defendant is responsible for the death of the deceased.\u201d
\nConsequently, she prayed the Court of Appeal to allow her appeal, set aside her conviction and the sentence imposed by the high court Judge, and acquit her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Yemi Oyeyemi, Abuja. An Abuja based house-wife, Maryam Sanda, sentenced to death for killing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, has asked the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division to void and set aside the death sentence pronounced on her by an Abuja high court. She was sentenced to death by hanging last month by Justice Yusuf […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[222,1068],"class_list":["post-24702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-appeal","tag-husband-killer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}