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| TONY MONTANA |
In the movie Scarface (I think), the lead
character Tony Montana played by Al Pacino has a case in court which he will
surely do time for, Tony some-how beats the case with the help of a very good
lawyer.
It’s a Monday afternoon (5th August
2013) around 2pm and I have just got home from a trip where my “trap didn’t
catch the bayla” and also I didn’t get
the “3 points”. I switch on the TV to
watch a little early 2000s programming (in
2013) and surf my way to the news on GTV.
In an interview session, a policeman with a name tag (plate) bearing the name YOHUNO has just made a statement along
the lines of “we
feel like giving up when accused persons can afford 12 lawyers… if they didn’t
do it then how come they can afford 12 lawyers?”. (Might not be his words
exactly but very, very, very close).
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| DCOP YOHUNO |
I am very shocked at the sound of this and I feel the
interviewer should probe a bit more but she doesn’t and lets it slide because a
lawyer would join them later via a not too clear telephone-line to counter that
point. Later on, I google “police-man
yohuno - ghana” and up pops the identity of the police officer; DCOP
Christian Tetteh Yohuno, Greater Accra regional Police Commander. The DCOP
should have let his PR officer earn his keep but maybe he looks better on TV
than the PR guy.
POLL - HOW DO
THE GHANA POLICE GET PROMOTIONS?
a.
Number of cases solved
b.
Party Colour
c.
Years in Service
Indeed the constitution
under Article 19 (2) c and
f guarantees the accused persons’ right to innocence until being
proven/pleading guilty and also the right to defending himself in court either
in person or by a lawyer of his choice (the constitution uses lawyer and not
lawyers). In Artcle 32 (1) e and f,
an article that deals with the detention of persons under “Emergency Law” the
accused “shall be afforded every possible facility to consult a lawyer of his
own choice…” (Still lawyer not lawyers). In f it adds that “at the hearing of
his case, he shall be permitted to appear in person or by a lawyer of his
choice (still… lawyer not lawyers). As to the “lawyer and lawyers” bit, it
might either be; semantics or the denotation/connotation of the word or its usage
that I am not getting but if you want to be a stickler, IT also uses “HE” and
not “SHE” when referring to accused persons.
WHAT
HAPPENED TO BEING INNOCENT UNTIL BEING PROVEN GUILTY BEYOND ALL REASONABLE
DOUBT?
The question I want to ask is; “since when did being able to afford
competent legal counsels contribute to making an accused person guilty?”
Perhaps the DCOP would like it very much if every accused person couldn’t
afford counsel and would have to rely on legal aid i.e. the state affording
him/her a lawyer (and with my luck he will get
the slowest horse in the legal stables in GH).
A
LAWYER IS ONLY AS GOOD AS HIS BRIEF.
The DCOP added that he cringes at what is becoming an all too familiar
scene where 1 state attorney gets pummeled by 12 very competent lawyers of an
accused person (Zimmerman anyone? Plus it’s
very difficult for journos to fit all those names in the story). The DCOP was too quick to lay the blame at the doorstep of the state
attorneys, what if the evidence gathered by the Police is not good enough to
secure a conviction even if the state attorney was a lawyer from a John Grisham
novel.
DCOP Tetteh Yohuno made mention of another situation that had me
baffled, but in a different way. He told
of a situation where an accused person plead guilty to a criminal charge but
the case has still been in court for 3 years. I can’t understand why a case
where the accused has admitted guilt will last in court for 3 years but I don’t
find it unbelievable
(after-all the wheels of justice grind slowly but still they grind and this is
GH).
He added that it feels like the police keep arresting the same
“criminals” over and over again because convictions are never made. I have always been worried about the
investigative procedures of the Ghana Police (it’s not quite like watching CSI but it’s not very easy
conducting investigations in Accra, if you like ask the “crack”
American team that were brought to investigate the market fires). As to arresting the same “criminals” over and over again it can create
vigilante cops who will adopt a shoot to kill policy (or in an ideal world a
super-hero like The Punisher, who will be cop by day and vigilante at night) which won’t be good for any of us because it won’t afford us a chance
for Lady (or
is it Mother, why isn’t this sexist?) Justice to prevail.
NOBODY
LIKES BEING SNITCHED ON
In order for the police in Ghana to be able to put criminals (who are really guilty) behind bars they
need the help of the citizens of the land because like it or not we live with
these people. We all want to be able to sleep peacefully at night and also
don’t want trigger-happy vigilantes patrolling our streets. So, every once in a
while we must snitch on our criminal neighbours (but please
don’t follow them around like Zimmerman).
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