Supreme Court shoots down Apau’s JDC findings on Woyome

A seven-member Supreme Court panel presided over by Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo has shot down findings of the Sole Judgment Debt Commissioner, Justice Yaw Apau, now a Supreme Court judge himself, on conclusions he reached when his commission considered two particular cases: Alfred Woyome vs AG and Sky Consult vs. Ghana Post.

The Supreme Court said the recommendations of the Sole Judgement Debt Commissioner sought to give interpretation to a decision of a court and that amounted to a breach of Article 125 and 127 of the 1992 constitution which does not permit the decision of a court to be derogated upon or varied by any other body in Ghana except the court itself.

A private legal practitioner, Claude Oppong, initiated the action. In court on Wednesday, 22 June, 2017, he argued that Article 125 spelt out clearly the independence of the judiciary.

He argued that the judgment debt commission interrogated the ruling a court had given with regards to the two cases and proceeded to declare them null and void, breaching Article 125 and 127 of the constitution.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the independence of the judiciary was crucial and that if there was a judgment from a court that anyone was seeking to set aside, it must come from a higher court and not any other body. For that reason, the Supreme Court declared those aspects of the Judgment Debt Commission report that commented on those two cases as unconstitutional and declared its ruling null and void and subsequently of no effect.