NO PLACE FOR SENTIMENT IN LAW

Once upon a time somewhere in the countryside of Nigeria, there was one lady of about twenty years of age who had lost both of her parents in a ghastly motor accident.She was the eldest of her two siblings.Her parents' people had abandoned her and her siblings.These children were forced to face challenges too much for them too bear at their tender ages.It got to a stage when they were left to grapple with the problem of accommodation when their parents' house rent was due and had to vacate the premises! They resorted to make-shift shelters around.Every night, they had to wait for traders to close just to have a place to lay their heads in their shops for the night.

It all got to the breaking point, especially for the lady, one night when some hoodlums numbering three invaded the premises of a shopping mall where she, her brother and sister were staying for the night.The leader of the gang molested and raped this young lady after a lot of physical struggle.The police later arrived at the scene after a  tip-off.Before the police arrival, however, the lady had hit the rapist several times on the head with a heavy object after the rape and this caused the guy to bleed profusely.It took the timely intervention of the police for the other two gangsters not to have attacked the lady in retaliation. Eventually this guy lost so much blood that he bled to death.

It later turned out that this guy that died in the incident was a prominent senator's son in the neighbourhood where it took place.The police soon became interested in the case.This lady was charged to court for the murder of her own rapist and all the witnesses of the accused person (the rape victim) all testified to the fact that the accused person was actually acting in the heat of the anger about the molestation the rapists had subjected her to when she was hitting him.At the end of the matter, the accused (the rape victim) was sentenced to life imprisonment as the murder charge was reduced to manslaughter.

The judgement of the court in this matter was not welcome by stakeholders in the struggle for the protection of the woman and the girl child against sexual harassment in the country.Can one say the judgement of the court in the case was fair to the lady in law in view of what she had suffered already?

THE LEGAL POSITION
The Nigerian criminal law provides for life imprisonment for manslaughter. That is the law.For a person charged initially with murder (which attracts nothing less than the capital punishment by death) to have had the charge reduced to manslaughter, the accused person's lawyer must have been very meticulous to establish, through a witness, that the hitting of the deceased by his client ( the accused person, now the convict) was done in the heat of the anger occasioned by the sexual molestation and rape she was subjected to by the deceased as this was an element that must have reduced the charge of murder to manslaughter.

Contrary to the stakeholders' sentiment in the scenario, it is pertinent to note that the case in the scenario was heard on merit and that the reduction of the charge from murder to manslaughter to attract lesser punishment which is life imprisonment was also on merit.There is nowhere it is written in the law that a person who suffered the ordeal suffered by the convict in the scenario should be excused from the full wrath of the law if found guilty of a capital offence.

Although it is acknowledged that the act of hitting the deceased by the convict (the lady) in our scenario could be pardoned in law on the ground of self-defence, she could not be pardoned when the hitting resulted in the death of the deceased.The law frowns upon the act of taking the law into one's hands and the law also respects the sanctity of human life.The only effect that the peculiarity of the scenario could have on the trial of the lady was  the reduction of her charge from murder to manslaughter which was done in the case.

It should further be noted that the aspect of the scenario that features the suffering the convict and her siblings were passing through as orphans was not enough in law to discharge and acquit the lady as the accused person in the trial.This is pure sentiment and there is no room for such in the Nigerian criminal law.

Thank you for reading.

See you tomorrow.