The tribunal system in Ghana's fourth republic: An experiment in judicial reintegration

African Affairs

Volumn 99, Issue 394, 2000, Pages 47-71

  Gocking, Roger ^a  

^a MERCY COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LEGAL SYSTEM; LEGISLATIVE IMPLEMENTATION; NATIONAL POLITICS;

GHANA;

EID: 0034110378     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/99.394.47     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. Daily Graphic (Accra), 7 January 1982.
2. West Africa (London), 2 July 1979.
3. Roger Cocking, 'Ghana's Public Tribunals: an experiment in revolutionary justice', African Affairs 95 (1996), pp. 197-223.
4. Courts Act, 1993 (Accra, 1993), Section 24, 14. Officially this is Act 459.
5. In treason trials three justices sit with a jury. Assessors can sit instead of a jury, but where the offence definitely attracts the death penalty, or life imprisonment, a jury must sit on such a case. The jury delivers verdicts but the assessors can only give advice. Information from Professor E. Gyimah-Boadi, 27 September 1999.
6. Couru Act, 1993, Section 44, 24.
7. Courts Act, 1993, Section 47, 26.
8. Conns Act, 1993, Section 23, 14. In the case of Circuit and Community Tribunals they had to be resident in the area of jurisdiction of the tribunal.
9. The Public Tribunals were initially scheduled to end their existence on 7 January 1993 when the new Constitution came into force, but the difficulty of completing prosecutions in progress made a six-month prolongation of their independent lives necessary.
10. Daily Graphic, 1 July 1994.
11. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Deputy Judicial Secretary, Accra, 24 November 1997.
12. For example, George Agyekum, former Chairman of the Board of National Public Tribunals, was working with the United Nations in Somalia, Addo Akins was a post-graduate student at the University of Ghana at Legon, and Boakye Danquah was in the United Kingdom where he had gone after he had left Ghana when he felt that his life was in danger. West Africa, 30 March-5 April 1992. Akins did apply for a position against the advice of Agyekum, who felt he would not get a fair evaluation. He was turned down. Interview with George Agyekum, Accra, 12 December 1997.
13. Comment of the Ghana Bar Association on the Report of the Committee of Experts (Constitution) on Proposals for a Draft Constitution of Ghana (Accra, 1993), p. 24. The use of the term 'traditional courts' is rather confusing, since it can be confused with the traditional chiefly courts which had an important judicial role in colonial times. I prefer to use the term 'regular' courts.
14. Interview with Charles Agbevor, 26 November 1997.
15. Their names were published in the Daily Graphic and the Judicial Service invited the public to give their views in 'writing' on 'any of the persons' selected. Daily Graphic, 8 September 1994. 16. Interview with Charles Agbevor, 24 November 1997.
16. Daily Graphic, 8 July 1994.
17. This was the law that established the Public Tribunals in 1982.
18. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November 1997.
19. Daily Graphic, 22 July 1994.
20. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November 1997.
21. For example, in July the Chief Justice, as the head of the Judicial Service, swore in 15 new Circuit Court judges. Daily Graphic, 30 July 1994.
22. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November 1997.
23. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November. They were in Tema, Accra, Koforidua, Cape Coast, Sekondi, Kumasi, Ho, Techiman and Tamale.
24. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 24 November 1997.
25. Ibid. One eventually withdrew.
26. Daily Graphic, 30 June 1995.
27. For example, see the Daily Graphic, 22 July 1994 and 26 June 1997.
28. Albert Busomtwi-Sam, then Minister of the Interior, admitted that there were cases of people having been remanded in custody for up to six years before their cases were heard and concluded. Daily Graphic, 26 June 1997.
29. Adjabeng is an area of Accra.
30. Daily Graphic, 18 and 19 July 1995.
31. Interview with Air Tetteh, a senior member of the Ghanaian Bar in private practice, Accra, 12 November 1997.
32. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November 1997. I tried to get a list of these appeals and their outcomes, but so far I have been unsuccessful.
33. Interview with George Agyekum, Accra, 12 December 1997. There is a great deal of. confusion in Ghana about what actually were actions undertaken by the Public Tribunals. During the early days PNDC rule there were a number of courts and investigative bodies that were not part of the tribunal system. Nevertheless, Ghanaians tend to lump their actions together with those of the Public Tribunals, and this contributes to the unfavourable light in which these feared instruments of revolutionary justice are held by many people in Ghana today. This was brought to my attention by a number of anecdotal accounts of 'scandalous' judicial processes that most probably had nothing to do with the Public Tribunals.
34. Daily Graphic, 6 June 1999. Obviously, however, this period antedated the existence of the Public Tribunals.
35. Fuelling the contemporary hostility to the tribunal system was the well-publicized appeal case in 1998 in which the Supreme Court quashed the 1989 conviction of Osei Kofi, who had been found guilty of extortion in a robbery case by a Public Tribunal, on the grounds that the evidence had 'not been corroborated'. Ghanaian Times (Accra), 28 May 1998.
36. Daily Graphic, 15 November 1995.
37. Daily Graphie, 3 February 1996.
38. Daily Graphie, 28 October 1995.
39. Daily Graphie, 8 March 1996.
40. Daily Graphie, 7 August 1996.
41. Daily Graphie, 19 October 1996.
42. Public Agenda, 10-16 November 1997. The papers claimed that not only Benneh but senior government members were involved in narcotics trafficking and using this money to fund arms purchases, and that these arms would have been used if the NDC (the National Democratic Congress-President Rawlings' party) had lost the election in 1996.
43. Daily Graphic, 9 October 1999. Apart from implicating her in drug smuggling to raise money to buy weapons if the NDC lost the election in 1996, she was accused more specifically of smuggling gold out of Ghana during her numerous unannounced trips to Switzerland where her sister allegedly had a jewelry shop.
44. Ghanaian Times, 23 July 1998.
45. The Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra), 17-18 March 1999. Presumably the other witnesses are now at large in Europe and not likely to return to Ghana. Also, Benneh has been in and out of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital where he has been undergoing treatment for 'multiple substance abuse', Daily Graphic, 11 February 1999.
46. Daily Graphic, 7 September 1996.
47. Daily Graphic, 20 December 1996.
48. Daily Graphic, 15 October and 28 November 1996.
49. Daily Graphie, 30 July 1996. This was equivalent to less than USS20 which people in Ghana considered far too little, in view of the seriousness of the crime. Kaneshie is an area of Accra.
50. Daily Graphic, 6 August 1996.
51. One of the best-known cases of this nature was the Safo Adu case which resulted in Tribunal Chairman, Boakye Danquah, fleeing Ghana because he felt his life was in danger. The Ghanaian Chronicle, 11-17 November 1991.
52. There was a similar outbreak of such hysteria in 1973 when I was first in Ghana. In one such case in Cape Coast, a large and angry crowd beat a demented man to death for supposedly having shrunk someone's genitals. The hysteria spread to Côte d'Ivoire and a front-page photograph of two police officers inspecting the genitals of a supposed victim, his back to the camera, appeared in the country's main daily newspaper, Fraternité Matin (Abidjan).
53. Daily Graphic, 10 March 1997.
54. Daily Graphic, 20 January 1997.
55. Daily Graphic, 21 January 1997.
56. For example, the Sefvvi Bekwai and the Noyem ritual murder cases in 1987-8.
57. Emmanuel Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A social history of alcohol in Ghana, c.1800 to recent times (James Currey, Oxford and Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH., 1997), p. 165.
58. Undoubtedly the most famous in the colonial past was the 'Kibi murder' in which a junior chief was murdered so that his blood could be used to 'wash' the stool of the recently deceased Okyehene of Akyem Abuakwa, Nana Sir Ofori Ana. For a description of this long-drawn-out trial see Richard Rathbone, Murder and Politics in Colonial Ghana (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 1993). A much more recent case involved an Indian doctor in Accra, Dr Ram Beckley, in whose hospital compound human heads and bloodstained swords were found. A huge mob immediately gathered and associated this discovery with 'recent disappearances of children in the area, Ghanaian Times, 18 July 1994. In spite of a police presence, the mob burnt down the hospital. There was a lengthy trial, and eventually in March 1995 Dr Beckley was found not guilty, Daily Graphic, 25 March 1995.
59. Daily Graphic, 20 November 1997.
60. Daily Graphic, 19 November 1997.
61. Ghanaian Times, 2 December 1997.
62. This does not mean that reporters do not still make mistakes over the names of the courts about which they are reporting. There are still references to 'district tribunals'.
63. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 7 April 1999.
64. Interview with J. C. Amonoo Mooney, Accra, 15 April 1999.
65. Interview with Isaac Duose, Accra, 12 April 1999.
66. Daily Graphie, 5 December 1997.
67. Daily Graphie, 9 January 1999.
68. Ghanaian Times, 15 April 1999. Wenchi is one of the larger towns in the Region.
69. According to G. S. Aggor, of the 188,953 crimes reported to the police in 1997 119,686 were not investigated, Daily Graphic, 4 December 1998.
70. Daily Graphic, 26 June 1997.
71. Ibid.Daily Graphic, 25 June 1998.
72. Ghanaian Times, 28 April 1998.
73. Ghanaian Times, 9 March 1999.
74. Daily Graphic, 21 January 1999.
75. Daily Graphic, 5 August 1998.
76. Ghanaian Times, 9 March 1999.
77. Daily Graphic, 20 January, 2 February and 13 March 1999.
78. Phillip Archer in West Africa, 10-16 October 1994.
79. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 7 April 1999.
80. Interview with J. C. Amonoo Mooney, Accra, 15 April 1999.
81. Daily Graphic, 12 December 1997. The money belonged to the NDC and was in Dr Asamoah's house for safe-keeping. He was the party chairman at the time of the elections in 1996.
82. The defendant, a storekeeper, was accused of stealing 04,999,400 and £2,224,600 (about US$3,200), the proceeds of sales of cement and drinks sold in the shop owned by the complainant, Mrs Bertha Nunyie.
83. In the Superior Court of Judicature in the Coun of Appeal. (Criminal Division) Sitting in Accra on the 12th Day of February 1998: Jonathan Dey vs. the Republic (Copy given to me by Charles Owoo, Accra, 7 April 1999).
84. Ibid., p. 2.
85. ibid., p. 14.
86. Ghanaian Times, 31 March and 16 April 1999.
87. Daily Graphic, 9 March 1999.
88. Interview with Isaac Duose, Accra, 12 April 1999.
89. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 7 April 1999.
90. Ghanaian Times, 6 March 1999.
91. In April 1999 the cedi was valued at 2,470 to the US dollar.
92. The cost of transport from Asikuma to Cape Coast would be around ¢2,000 one way.
93. Ghanaian Times, 6 March 1999.
94. Ghanaian Times, 13 March 1999.
95. Ghanaian Times, 29 August 1995 and 19 May 1998.
96. Ghanaian Times, 14 July 1998.
97. Daily Graphic, 13 March 1999.
98. Daily Graphic, 11 August 1998.
99. Interview with Ellison Owusu Fordwuor, Accra 16 April 1999. In spite of the Ghana Bar Association's ban on its members appearing before the Public Tribunals, he had done so in the interests of his clients.
100. Interview with Isaac Duose, Accra, 12 April 1999.
101. Interview with J. C. Amonoo Mooney, Accra, 15 April 1999.
102. Interview with George Agyekum, Accra, 2 April 1999.
103. Paul Nugent, Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana: Power, ideology and the burden of history, 1982-1994 (Francis Pinter, London and Asempa Publishers, Accra, 1996), p.273.
104. Daily Graphic, 7 January 1982.
105. Daily Graphic, 15 January 1999.
106. Interview with Charles Agbevor, Accra, 26 November 1997.
107. Bamidele Olowu, 'Redesigning African civil service reforms', The Journal of Modem African Studies 37, 1 (1999), p. 1.
108. Richard Sandbrook and Jay Oelbaum, 'Reforming dysfunctional institutions through democratisation? reflection on Ghana', The Journal of Modem African Studies 35, 4 (1997), p. 619.
109. Ibid., p. 639. The expansion of the Ghanaian civil service was hardly unique in Africa. It was even more massive in Nigeria particularly during the years of the oil boom; between 1960 and 1981 it expanded from 71,693 to almost 2 million.
110. Peter Koehn, Public Policy and Administration in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria (Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1990), p.17.
111. Olowu, 'Redesigning civil service reforms', p. 10.