EBHOMIEN & ORS V. THE QUEEN

• Pages: 288-290

288

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NIGERIAN SUPREME COURT CASES

[1963] N.S.C.C.

EBHOMIEN & ORS V. THE QUEEN

5

1.

ROWLAND EBHOMIEN

2.

AKHIGBE EBHOMIEN

3.

ASIOMWAN IYINBOR

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APPELLANTS

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10

4.

OGHOEDINA EHIZOGIE

5.

PATRICK IYINBOR

V

THE QUEEN

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RESPONDENT

SUIT NO. FSC 163/1963

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SUPREME COURT OF NIGERIA

ADEMOLA,

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C.J.N.

BRETT,

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J.S.C.

BAIRAMIAN,

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J.S.C.

6th December, 1963.

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Criminal Law - Statements to police by accused person - Improper means of

obtaining.

ISSUE:

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1. Whether confessions made after the detention of family members and

fellow-villagers of the defendants by the police are free and voluntary

confessions.

FACTS:

There was a murder in the defendants' village and the police took a number of

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the village men, women and children - some of whom were related to the defend-

ants - and detaired them in another village. This distressed the defendants. A

police inspector told the defendants' village elders that the detainees would be re-

leased after the offenders came forward. Three of the defendants then made state-

ments of complicity in the offence. The trial Judge considered the inspector's

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words merely an exhortation and that as the defendants did not say they were con-

fessing in order to get their people released, there was no inducement operating

on their minds when they so admitted. Their conviction rested on their statements

and they appealed.

HELD:

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41.)

The prosecution has a duty to show that a confession was free and voluntary;

it was plain that tre police had taken persons to the other village and were detain-

ing them there so that it should operate on the minds of their fellow villagers; the

statements ought not to have been admitted.

PER CURIAM:

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What the inspector told the elders was wrongly regarded as mere exhortation.

C.

lkpeazu, Q.C.

(with him O.C.

Obi),

for the Appellants.

Respondent unrepresented.

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BAIRAMIAN, J.S.C.

(Delivering the Judgment of the Court) The five appellants

were tried with four others on a count of murdering one Yekini Momodu at Ujogba

Village in the Benin Division on 18th September, 1961. The other four were