By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
The lead defence lawyer at the on-going Court Martial has urged Judge Advocate Otto During to deliver judgment before the end of the year after the prosecution asked for more time again to reply to a no-case submission by the defence two months ago.
Lawyer Julius Cuffie urged the court to withdraw the prosecution’s file and deliver judgment on the matter because the prosecutor had been afforded reasonable time to make his submission but had not done so.
He said “it has taken three months since the defence made a no-case submission and the prosecutor has had two months to reply.”
The defence lawyer urged the court to proceed with judgment in the absence of the prosecution’s reply “for the sake of progress,” arguing that the maxim “justice delayed is justice denied” was a two-edged sword which applied to the prosecution and the defence.
State prosecutor, Gerard Soyei, objected to the application, citing the “Rule of Natural Justice,” which he described as a cardinal judicial principle.
This rule, he said, stated that if one party made a claim, the other side must be heard and that the rule must not be breached.
Soyei submitted that the maxim as put forward by the defence rested on the state of mind of the prosecutor. He said his delay in filing and serving his submission to the court was neither “deliberate nor tactical.” He attributed the delay to his workload, saying that he had too much of data to be typed. The state prosecutor urged the court to consider the surrounding circumstances over his delay to submit his reply.
The Judge Advocate told the prosecutor to reply to the no-case submission on Wednesday 3 December, 2014.
Arrested and imprisoned in August last year, the 14 soldiers were alleged to have planned a mutiny at the Teko Barracks in Makeni, northern Sierra Leone. They faced eight counts of conspiracy, mutiny, failure to suppress mutiny and incitement to mutiny. They had denied all the charges.
© Politico 27/11/14
