Following her conviction by an FCT High Court over the killing of her husband, Maryam Sanda has approached the Court of Appeal in Abuja, asking the court to set aside the verdict and acquit her.
Sanda, who was sentenced to death by hanging for killing Bilyaminu Bello by Justice Yusuf Halilu on January 27, said the trial judge “was tainted by bias and prejudices.”
According to her, this led to the denial of her right to fair hearing and her consequent conviction based on circumstantial evidence despite the reasonable doubt that was created by evidence of witnesses, lack of confessional statement, absence of murder weapon, lack of corroboration of evidence by two or more witnesses and lack of autopsy report to determine the true cause of her husband’s death.
Sanda filed the appeal on 20 grounds through her lawyers, Rickey Tarfa, Olusegun Jolaawo, Regina Okotie-Eboh and Beatrice Tarfa.
She pointed to the failure of the trial judge to rule, one way or the other, on her preliminary objection, challenging the charge preferred against her and the jurisdiction of the court as evidence of bias and a denial of her right to fair hearing as constitutionally guaranteed.
“The honourable trial judge erred in law when having taken arguments on the appellant’s preliminary objection to the validity of the charge on the 19th of March, 2018 failed to rule on it at the conclusion of trial or at any other time,” she said in the application.
“The trial judge exhibited bias against the defendant in not ruling one way or the other on the said motion challenging his jurisdiction to entertain the charge and therefore fundamentally breached the right to fair hearing of the defendant.”
In ground II, the appellant contended that the trial judge erred and misdirected himself by usurping the role of the police when he assumed the duty of an Investigating Police Officer (IPO) as contained in Page 76 of his judgment.
The court is yet to fix a date to hear the case.
