OLUSANYA ONITILO V. THE STATE (2017)

Background

Olusanya Onitilo and another accused person were charged before the High Court of Ogun State, sitting at Ijebu-Ode, with conspiracy and murder contrary to sections 324 and 316(1) of the Criminal Code Law, Cap. 29, Vol. II, Laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 1978. The deceased was the appellant’s son-in-law. On the night of 5 October 2001, the deceased attended a party at Oke-Eri Village and later went to the appellant’s home. A quarrel followed after the appellant refused to provide him with more alcohol. The deceased was allegedly beaten, restrained and taken to the house of PW2, an elderly relative, who advised that he be taken to the police.

The deceased subsequently disappeared. His decapitated body was found floating in a nearby river, while his severed head was later recovered from behind the appellant’s house after information supplied by the appellant. A post-mortem examination concluded that death resulted from severe haemorrhage caused by decapitation. The prosecution also tendered several statements made by the appellant to the police, exhibits B, C, D, E, F and G. In those statements, and in parts of his testimony, the appellant admitted that he had been with the deceased, had taken him to PW2, had later found him motionless, and had cut off his head, removed internal organs and disposed of the body. He denied, however, that he caused the deceased’s death.

The High Court convicted the accused persons and sentenced them to death by hanging. The Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction. The appellant then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Issues

1. Whether the Court of Appeal was right to rely on the medical evidence in exhibit A and hold that the deceased died from severe haemorrhage resulting from decapitation.
2. Whether exhibits C, D, E, F and G were properly treated as confessional statements capable of supporting the appellant’s conviction.

The Supreme Court also noted that the appellant had failed to formulate issues from grounds 3 and 6 of the notice of appeal. Those grounds were consequently deemed abandoned and struck out.

Ratio Decidendi

The Supreme Court held that the burden of proof in a criminal trial remains on the prosecution throughout and does not shift to the accused. The prosecution must rebut the constitutional presumption of innocence by proving the charge beyond reasonable doubt. However, reasonable doubt is not every fanciful, slight, improbable or unsupported doubt; it must arise from credible evidence.

The Court reaffirmed that criminal guilt may be established by direct evidence, circumstantial evidence or a voluntary confessional statement. In a murder charge, the prosecution must prove that the deceased died, that the death was caused by the act or omission of the accused, and that the act was intentional, with knowledge that death or grievous bodily harm was its probable consequence.

A medical report is desirable but is not indispensable where other evidence enables the court to infer the cause of death. The Court therefore held that the post-mortem report was not the sole basis of the conviction. The appellant’s statements, the evidence of the witnesses, the recovery of the body and head, and the surrounding circumstances collectively established the cause of death and the appellant’s involvement.

Regarding the statements, the Court distinguished between a denial that a statement was made and an objection that it was involuntarily made. A denial of authorship affects the weight to be given to the statement, not its admissibility. Where voluntariness is challenged, the trial court must conduct a trial-within-trial. The trial court had done so in relation to the challenged statements and correctly found them voluntary. The plea of non est factum was also held to be inappropriate in the circumstances of a criminal proceeding.

Court Findings

The Court found that the appellant was the last person seen with the deceased and that the chain of events disclosed no credible intervening cause capable of breaking the connection between the appellant’s conduct and the death. The appellant’s account that he merely found the deceased already dead was rejected as implausible. The Court questioned how he could have known that the deceased was dead merely from finding him motionless, and why, if he had no involvement in the death, he would decapitate and dismember the body, remove its organs, hide the head and dispose of the remains.

The doctrine of last seen was applied as part of the circumstantial case. Since the appellant was the last person in the company of the deceased, and the surrounding evidence led irresistibly to his involvement, he was required to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the deceased met his death. His extra-judicial statements substantially implicated him and were corroborated by the recovery of the severed head and the discovery of the body.

The Court further held that the alleged inconsistency between the trial judge’s reference to beating and the medical evidence attributing death to haemorrhage from decapitation was not material or fatal. The appellate court was entitled to affirm the conviction on the basis of the totality of the evidence and the respondent’s notice, which was recognised under the applicable Court of Appeal Rules.

Because the High Court and Court of Appeal had made concurrent findings of fact, the appellant had to demonstrate that those findings were perverse, unsupported by evidence, or affected by a serious error of law or procedure resulting in a miscarriage of justice. He failed to meet that burden.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal and affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Ibadan Division, which had upheld the appellant’s conviction and sentence for murder by the High Court of Ogun State. The conviction and death sentence were therefore left undisturbed.

Significance

The decision illustrates the evidential flexibility available to the prosecution in Nigerian murder trials. It confirms that a conviction may rest on a combination of circumstantial evidence and voluntary confessional statements, even where there is no direct eyewitness account of the killing. It also clarifies that medical evidence, though highly useful, is not an absolute requirement where the cause of death can reasonably be inferred from proven facts. The judgment is equally important on the treatment of retracted confessions: the proper question is ordinarily the weight to be attached to the statement, unless involuntariness is specifically alleged, in which case a trial-within-trial is required. Finally, the case reinforces the substantial obstacle facing an appellant who seeks to overturn concurrent findings of fact by two lower courts.