Funso Williams
A Lagos State High Court sitting in Igbosere, on Monday, discharged and acquitted the six suspects standing tribulation for the murder of a tardy Lagos politician, Funsho Williams.
In setting the six men free, Justice Ebenezer Adebajo ruled that the prosecution failed to establish any nexus between Williams’ death and acts of any of the six.
The judge verbalized that the evidences given by the prosecution witnesses were impotent, superficial and at best notionally theoretical.
“I accede with the defendants’ counsel that the evidence given in reverence of the offence of conspiracy to commit murder is impuissant and unreliable because they are superficial, they amount to notional theorization when given consideration. There is nothing cogent and compelling to show that any cumulation of the defendants has acted in furtherance of a malefaction,” the judge held.
He additionally ruled that there were insufficient materials to infer that the six defendants conspired to murder and genuinely murdered the tardy Williams.
Williams, a governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, was murdered in his house at No. 34A, Corporation Drive, Dolphin Estate, Ikoyi, Lagos, on the night of July 27, 2006.
For eight years the six men – Bulama Kolo, Musa Maina, David Cassidy, Tunani Sonani, Mustapha Kayode and Okponwasa Imariebie – had stood tribulation on two counts of conspiracy to murder and murder of Williams.
In the course of the tribulation, the prosecution, led by the Director of the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecution, Mrs. Idowu Alakija, presented six witnesses afore the court.
Among them was the Lagos State Chief Forensic Pathologist, Professor John Obafunwa, who conducted an autopsy on Williams’ corpse and told the court on April 16, 2014 that Williams died of asphyxia resulting from manual strangulation.
Another witness, Assistant Superintendent of Police Abasi Nseh Udoe, had on May 14, 2014 told the court that Williams’ mobile phone was recuperated from the first defendant, Bulama Kolo.
Udoe told the court that the fourth, fifth and sixth defendants were security men responsible for the auspice of the life and properties of the deceased. And Alakija had urged the court to convict the incriminated having failed in their responsibilities.
Udoe further told the court that forensic analysis revealed that a bloodstained shirt recuperated from the murder scene belonged to the sixth defendant, Okponwasa Imariebie.
Another witness, Chief Superintendent of Police Shehu Sanni Wazo of the Nigerian Police Forensic Department, had tendered afore the court a knife, a rope, a mattress and a cushion as items recuperated from the murder scene.
The court had on May 16, 2014 admitted the items as exhibits.
However, upon the closure of the prosecution’s case on May 16, 2014, the defence had responded by filing a no-case application.
In the no-case application, the defence, led by Mr. Agbara Okezie, had argued that the totality of evidences given by the prosecution witnesses had established no nexus between the incriminated and the death of the deceased.
Okezie had argued that the evidences were only circumstantial, not compelling and not resistible enough to be relied upon by the court.
He had then prayed the court to throw out the case and discharge the defendants as they were not guilty of the offences levelled against them.
On Monday, Justice Adebajo ruled on the nocase application filed by the defence.
The judge dismissed the case and discharged the six defendants. Adebajo held that the witness, Udoe, failed to prove that the Samsung phone recuperated from the first defendant authentically belonged to the tardy Williams, verbally expressing the witness failed to trace the call log and name the accommodation provider.
He held that though Obafunwa testified that Williams died as a result of strangulation, the pathologist did not link any of the six inculpated to the action.
He verbalized,” It is eminent to state that the Chief Medical Pathologist of the state in his evidence verbally expressed pellucidly that the deceased was killed by strangulation. The dagger and the rope were diversion. The evidence of the pathologist, PW3, limpidly established the cause of death. The prosecution did not make any effort to tie the cause of death to the action of any individual or set of defendants.
“I am satiated that the deceased has been shown to have died, but it remains at immensely colossal after the conclusion of prosecution’s case as to the person or persons who caused his death. The pathologist who verbally expressed the deceased died by strangulation did not allude to any of the defendants as having carried out the act; he was never asked.”
Copyright PUNCH.
