Vicky Bright: Indicted judges can’t use entrapment as defense

A private legal practitioner and former legal adviser to ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor has stated that the judges caught on tape to have allegedly taken bribe cannot appeal to entrapment as a defense.

A two-year investigative work done by undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, captured 34 judges on video taking bribe to pervert justice.

Ghana’s Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood has launched investigative and impeachment proceedings against the 22 Magistrates and 12 High Court Judges.

Counsel for some of the accused judges have made assertions that they were entrapped by the undercover journalist.

Ms. Bright, however, told ‘Point of Law’ host Godwin Agyei-Gyamfi on Class 91.3 FM on Tuesday that: “I know that some of my learned colleagues have held the view that Anas’ conduct in this whole matter is tantamount to entrapment. I don’t share that view. If you look at the UK and US legislation, it is very clear, unequivocally clear that you can only use entrapment as a defense where the perpetrator is acting in an official capacity.”

“I think the UK law is the same as the Ghanaian law in this respect and so when you look at these two, which are two of the jurisdictions that we follow most closely, the judges in question cannot use entrapment as a defense,” she said.

To buttress her point, Ms. Bright cited a specific case relating to undercover journalists in a Court of Appeal in the UK, which occurred in 1980. She quoted the judge as specifically stating that “there is no entrapment in English Law of those entrapped by undercover journalists.”

Her position was supported by Charles Bawa Dua, another lawyer, who appeared as a co-discussant on the show.

According to him, Anas’ objective was not “to punish, as it were, but was supposed to expose what he believed was corruption in the system.”