COCOBOD trial: State Attorney told to stop misleading court

Principal State Attorney, Stella Ohene Appiah, was forced to recoil when defence lawyers felt she was trying to “mislead” the High Court with “false” information in the trial of former COCOBOD boss, Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, and two others.

In her attempt to discredit the submission of the defence counsel on a “serious concern” bothering on the failure of the court’s registrar to provide them with the record of proceedings relative to Justice Clemence Honyenuga, Stella Ohene Appiah, the defence teams felt, misrepresented some facts, but was stopped in her tracks.

Dr. Opuni and businessman Seidu Agongo, as well as Agricult Ghana Limited, have been facing 27 charges, including defrauding by false pretence, willfully causing financial loss to the state, corruption by public officers, and contravention of the Public Procurement Act in the purchase of Lithovit liquid fertiliser between 2014 and 2016.

They have pleaded not guilty to the charges and are on GH¢300,000.00 each in self-recognizance bail.

On Wednesday, November 22, the Principal State Attorney claimed in court that the parties were given the record of proceedings.

“The last sitting of every week, which happens to be on a Thursday, parties were served records on either the following Monday or Tuesday,” she said, pointing to the era of the previous judge, Justice Clemence Honyenuga.

But both defence counsel, listening with rapt attention, would not allow any ‘falsehood’ to go into the records of the court and therefore sprung on their feet to get the facts presented as they should be.

Counsel for the first accused, Samuel Codjoe had on a number of occasions told the court that their hands have been tied behind them, accusing the registrar of willfully refusing to give them the proceedings, which he said “has made it impossible to conduct our defence because we require the records to enable us to complete our examination.”

He, however, noted that, after a repeated order on November 21, about 3,000 pages of documents were given to him by the registrar, arranged in a disorderly manner, at about 4 pm on November 22, despite the fact that the order was given on July 12.

Counsel for the second and third accused persons, Benson Nutsukpui, also added that he has yet to receive the record of proceedings as of November 22.

“There is no chronology in this bundle of paper. It has nothing to do with we counsel not performing our duty at all. We send letters, and we don’t get the copies. The bundle of papers does not qualify to be record of proceedings. It’s unfortunate that, the impression seems to be created in this particular matter is that the registry does not obey rules of practice,” Mr. Benson said as he pointed to the proceedings beside his learned colleague Samuel Codjoe.

But Stella Ohene Appiah still claimed that proceedings were made available to the parties in the case, and went further to state that the defence even attached proceedings in the appeal against the dismissal of the submission of no case, which she said was heard by the superior court.

“We are saying that we have always had proceedings from the court until the court was differently constituted,” she asserted but Mr. Codjoe interjected, “Counsel is misleading the court. Because, the appeal on the submission of no case has not been determined.”

The Principal State Attorney decided to reframe his submission.

“My Lord, submission of no case filed by counsel went all the way to the Supreme Court, and there was a review. After the decision of the trial court, calling upon the accused persons to open their defense, they filed an application invoking the supervisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to quash the decision of the high court, and to prohibit the trial judge from further hearing the case.

“This application went all the way to the review bench of the Supreme Court. As I said earlier, proceedings were attached to this application. This is what I meant when I said the submission of no case went to the Supreme Court."

But Samuel Codjoe still rebutted: “When the prosecution says that, when we applied for certiorari (judicial review) to quash the decision of the high court at the Supreme Court, we attached the records of proceedings, that is false.

“One, the application is on the docket for everybody to see. When you apply for a judicial review, you don’t attach the record of proceedings; we attach the ruling. And if there are one or two proceedings, you attach. It’s very easy for my learned friend to verify from the case docket.”

Nevertheless, Stella Ohene Appiah was bent on pushing the narrative that all the parties are given, at least, every week’s proceedings.

However, the two counsels for the accused persons denied her claims and advised her to speak for the prosecution alone.

Lawyer Codjoe then pointed out to her that, on their part, they only received specific proceedings when they applied for them to back certain motions, insisting that his side has never received the record of proceedings without applying for it, like how the court treated the prosecution.

The Principal State Attorney then backtracked and informed the court that the prosecution made just one application for the proceedings, and since then, they have been given copies of the records of proceedings without reapplying under Justice Honyenuga.

Both Samuel Codjoe and Benson Nutsukpui also challenged Stella Ohene Appiah to show proof that they have been served with records of proceedings in the past because the court would always have evidence of that.

Stella Ohene Appiah appeared mesmerized by that challenge. As she was murmuring, the trial judge, Justice Aboagye Tandoh, sensed that the principal state attorney had been found wanting. The judge therefore intervened and asked the defence counsel to abandon that demand for evidence so that the court could make progress.

The judge also acknowledged the need for the court record to be kept in an orderly manner and paged, as contended by Lawyer Codjoe.

“Every document is supposed to be paged. Anything short of this cannot be the record of proceedings,” Justice Tandoh noted.