Midland saga: Police 'calculatedly misled' court – Anyenini

Mr Samson Lardi Anyenini, the civil lawyer who represented Ms Patience Osafo, the 37-year-old grandmother who was assaulted by a police officer at the Shiashie branch of Midland Savings and Loans last year, has said he suspects the police deliberately misled the court in the criminal aspect of the case in a calculated way that made the court believe the complainant was not interested in having the accused officer, Lance Corporal Frederick Amanor Godzi, aka Skalla, prosecuted, thereby discharging him for want of prosecution.

Skalla was tried for assaulting the Midland customer on 19 July 2018. The grandmother had gone to the financial institution to withdraw some money from the GHS270 she had in her account, but to no avail despite several previous attempts.

Her insistence on not leaving the banking hall until she made the withdrawal, got the AK-47-wielding police officer on duty at the time, to confront and physically assault her despite the victim holding her grandchild in her arms.

The assault case got the whole country enraged. The officer and three workers of Midland were later arrested and charged.

But all of them were discharged in December 2018 by the court presided over by Ms Cecilia Dapaah Mireku.

The three Midland staff are Jocelyn Kukua-Fakah, the Operations Manager; Shirley Portia Anaman, Customer Service Officer; and Prince Ayensu, a driver.

According to the Daily Graphic, they were discharged due to the lack of interest in the trial by Ms Osafo.

She is said to have failed to appear before the court to testify and also failed to help the police with investigations.

Ms Osafo was compensated with a house and some “generous” amount of money, by Midland Savings and Loans to avert a civil suit in the same matter, according to Mr Anyenini.

The lawyer told Accra-based Citi FM on Tuesday, 29 January 2019 her client “has always been minded” to file a civil suit against Skalla, adding that: “It’s not a chapter that is closed, particularly seeing what is coming out of the state process, seeing what is coming out of the police process. This is a police-driven prosecution. Even though it’s the state, it is the police that is in court prosecuting their own on behalf of the state because of the assault”.

Regarding the discharge by the court of the accused persons, Mr Anyenini said: “She called me once, at the initial stages to inform me that the prosecution had asked her to be in court and they had called her on a Thursday and required of her to be in court on a Friday.

“Meanwhile, she was in Kumasi because her one and only sister she lived with here, who had fallen ill – now we know that she suffered a stroke – had been taken to Kumasi, so, she went there to take care of her and she was called impromptu to come to Accra.

“So, I informed her to relay back to the prosecutors that she will not be able to attend court because of the circumstance, and that if she was given the next adjourned date, she will prepare herself and appear. I have confirmed with here this morning and she says apart from that one single invitation at the initial stage, she’s never received any invitation from the police prosecution.

“So, I ask myself: how did we get to a point for a case to be thrown out on the basis of want of prosecution? Here are my suspicions: the police deliberately did not give her [complainant] information, they took one adjournment after the other without informing her, misleading the court in the process that they were informing her and that she was unavailable to attend. And when that happens, the court is justified to dismiss the case for want of prosecution”.

Speaking superficially on the reason for the court’s discharge of Skalla and the three others, which is her unavailability and disinterest in the case, Mr Anyenini said: “So that – from the information I get from her – would be palpable falsehood, would be pure lies because she tells me the only time she got an invitation from the prosecution, was the one time, initially, when she was asked to appear in court and she had good reason because she was being informed a day before the trial. And apart from being informed a day before the trial, she was away in Kumasi and couldn’t make her way to Accra”.

“But she had been assisted earlier to go to the police and to give a statement and to give them everything that the police needed for the prosecution. The most important thing the police required for this prosecution is the video you and I are aware of. So, they should be telling a different story. I suspect they can do better than this”, Mr Anyenini said.

He added: “This is a clear calculated plan and they went to the court, took adjournment after adjournment, never informed the victim or the complainant, yet kept repeating to the court that she had been informed and she was disinterested. I spoke to her this morning and she said to me that she has never done anything to suggest she was disinterested”.