By Saio Marrah
Magistrate Mark Ngegba has committed for trial in the High Court the murder of Gillis Edward Ola Johnson, a former teacher of Providence High School in Freetown.
The magistrate dismissed a no-case submission made by lawyer Teddy Koroma on behalf of Mohamed Aroun Conteh on Wednesday 2nd August 2023.
According to him, the evidence shows that the accused was the only person who visited the house of the deceased on the day of the incident, noting that circumstantial evidence may only be decided by jurors.
Magistrate Ngegba also told the court that he was satisfied that only the accused had something to say about the death of the deceased and that he knew the cause of death.
Earlier lawyer Teddy Koroma argued that it was essential for the prosecution to establish that the killing was done with intent and that the burden was on the prosecution to establish the case by substantiating the evidence before the court. He submitted that the prosecution “woefully failed” to establish a case against his client. Lawyer Koroma said it was clear that someone was killed, but that the prosecution failed to establish who did the killing.
He said where the prosecution fails to establish the essential evidence for the offence charged, it would be unsafe for a conclusion to be reached that the accused had a case to answer.
He pointed out that the nine prosecution witnesses did not see the accused committing the act of killing and the evidence before the court did not reveal that the accused held any malice against the deceased which might have led to the killing. He submitted that even the food which the accused said he was asked to buy for the deceased was not poisoned as confirmed by autopsy.
State Prosecutor, Umu Sumaray argued that the prosecution met all the limbs in establishing the case. She said if circumstantial evidence is what the prosecution had, it is what they will prove and referred to the case of State vs. Baimba Moiforay which she prosecuted in 2016 because it was also based on circumstantial evidence which the court drew inference from and convicted the accused. She said all evidence pointed in the direction of the accused.
Lawyer Summaray said that in such a case it was the intention that mattered not whether there was malice and that the autopsy indicates a case of unnatural death – that, she said proves that Johnson was killed intentionally. She also told the court that it was a fact that the accused and the deceased had a quarrel because the accused sold a Bluetooth device belonging to the deceased.
On the question of who killed teacher Johnson, the prosecutor said the second prosecution witness testified saying “the accused said they stabbed his teacher multiple times”, but that throughout the testimonies so far there is no evidence that the deceased was stabbed multiple times.
Lawyer Summaray noted that the accused was never consistent in his statement to police especially when he said the wound on his palm came about after he intervened to stop the deceased from being stabbed by some people. She said that if four men had attacked the accused, how come there was no corresponding wound on the accused’s body. She said the accused admitted that he visited the deceased every Saturday and that he went to the house on the very day of the incident.
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