I never knew Maxwell Adam Mahama, but I have been unable to hold back the tears all week. A group of people decided to constitute themselves into police, prosecution, judge and jury, tried him summarily, found him guilty – guilty of what?
Nothing!
They convicted, sentenced him to death and executed the sentence by stoning and setting him alight.
Stop calling this mob justice. It is what it is – mob injustice! In a democracy of the rule of law, like ours, the job of adjudicating disputes, trying a case to pronounce someone guilty of a criminal offence, I mean the administration of justice is assigned to specific institutions starting and ending with courts.
Consequently, article 125 of Ghana’s Constitution provides that: “Justice emanates from the people and shall be administered in the name of the Republic by the Judiciary which shall be independent and subject only to this Constitution. Citizens may exercise popular participation in the administration of justice through the institutions of public and customary tribunals and the jury and assessor systems. The judicial power of Ghana shall be vested in the Judiciary, accordingly, neither the President nor Parliament nor any organ or agency of the President or Parliament shall have or be given final judicial power.”
But I return to a concern I have raised over and again and declare that the police is indirectly engaged in illegal official mob injustice when it swoops on an entire community, arrests four score and seven in pursuit of one suspect and parades them before media cameras.
Soldiers engage in similar conduct when they strip a fellow citizen and beat him up for wearing their uniform. They do same when they descend heavily on a Kumasi suburb because one of their own has been mistreated by a civilian. “A court shall not withhold or withdraw bail merely as a punishment.” This is section 97 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
What are judges who aide police to keep on remand, for unduly long periods and without justifiable grounds, an accused supposed to be presumed innocent doing when they refuse them bail to show them “something small”? Mob injustice is nothing than breaking the law in the pursuit of ostensible justice.
The media is engaged in mob injustice when together with citizens including politicians and various commentators prejudge matters and destroy reputations of individuals and businesses so often without first concluding the processes of verifying the allegations. Haveyou ever paused to make the most basic double-checking before relying on that rumour about your friend before proceeding to spread same?
In those emotional moments, we all forget or simply ignore the constitutional endorsement in article 15 of the fact that [t]he dignity of all persons shall be inviolable’ and that “[n]o person shall, whether or not he is arrested, restricted or detained, be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; any other condition that detracts or is likely to detract from his dignity and worth as a human being” with the emphasis that “[a] person who has not been convicted of a criminal offence shall not be treated as a convicted person…” Yes, we also do forget or ignore the enjoinment in article 19 that “[a] person charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed to be innocent until he is proved or has pleaded guilty”.
Today is June 3. I will even go further to declare that it is national mob injustice when we all go to sleep and watch the 200 maimed survivors of the avoidable flood and fire disaster suffer, relatives of the 150 who died continue to grieve and suffer while the committee set up to investigate it can’t seem to ever finish its work two years on.
Let’s hope the OneGhanaMovement launched yesterday by Dr. Joyce Aryee and Justice Jones Dotse will get them adequate compensation and justice.
#Justice4CaptMahama #SayNoToMobInjustice
Samson Lardy ANYENINI
June 3, 2017
Watch full video below:
Source:Myjoyonline