[ad_1]
In a verdict ending a rare legal case that has seen twists and turns in the past nine years, a 34-year-old Nigerian was acquitted of a capital drug trafficking charge after the Court of Appeal reversed its decision to 2015 to condemn him.
Following a 4-1 split decision, a panel of five judges ruled yesterday that the earlier sentence can no longer be upheld after new evidence emerged that Ilechukwu Uchechukwu Chukwudi was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms (PTSS) when she lied to narcotics officers. in 2011.
The majority, consisting of Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Appellate Justices Andrew Phang and Judith Prakash, and Chief Justice Chao Hick Tin, concluded that the 2015 decision was “demonstrably incorrect.”
Ilechukwu arrived in Singapore from Nigeria on November 13, 2011, bringing a black suitcase with him.
He passed it on to Singaporean Hamidah Awang, who was later arrested at Woodlands Checkpoint after nearly 2kg of methamphetamine was found inside.
Mr. Ilechukwu was arrested in his hotel room the next morning.
He was originally acquitted by the Superior Court in 2014 after the judge accepted his testimony that he did not know the suitcase contained drugs.
The prosecution appealed to a three-judge Court of Appeal, which overturned the acquittal and sentenced him.
What tipped the balance at the time were the many lies told by Mr. Ilechukwu in his statements, which the high court concluded could only be explained by “the awareness of his guilt”.
In 2017, the Nigerian’s lawyers succeeded in getting the high court to reopen the case.
-
The twists and turns
-
November 13, 2011: Mr. Ilechukwu Uchechukwu Chukwudi arrives in Singapore from Nigeria with a black suitcase, which he passes to someone else.
November 14, 2011: The Nigerian is arrested at his hotel after almost 2 kg of methamphetamine is found in his suitcase.
November 5, 2014: Mr. Ilechukwu is acquitted of drug trafficking after a trial in the High Court.
June 29, 2015: He is convicted by the Court of Appeal, which annuls the acquittal after an appeal from the prosecution.
March 6, 2017: A psychiatric report prepared for sentencing states that Mr. Ilechukwu was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when his statements were recorded.
April 5, 2017: Mr. Ilechukwu presents a motion to the Court of Appeal to reopen his case.
August 2, 2017: The Court of Appeal returns the case to the High Court to determine the effects of PTSD and whether Mr. Ilechukwu suffered from it.
July 5, 2019: The High Court finds that Mr. Ilechukwu was suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when his statements were recorded.
Mr. Ilechukwu is acquitted after the Court of Appeal overturns his conviction.
This was after a report by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), prepared by the prosecution for sentencing, stated that Mr. Ilechukwu suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after witnessing a massacre when he was five years old.
The case was returned to the Superior Court for a hearing in which three psychiatrists from the defense and one from the prosecution gave their expert opinions on post-traumatic stress disorder.
At their trial yesterday, most said that there is now a plausible innocent explanation for the lies.
The high court accepted that Mr. Ilechukwu’s PTSD and PTSS history in 2011 “may have led him to vastly overestimate the threat to his life” and that “this, in turn, may have led the applicant to utter flagrant falsehoods and little sophisticated in their statements in an attempt to escape the death penalty and save his life. “
If these tests had been before the supreme court in 2015, “the result would have been different,” said the majority.
In his dissenting trial, Appellate Judge Tay Yong Kwang said he did not believe the new evidence revealed any errors in the earlier decision to convict the Nigerian.
“I sympathize with the applicant for his past suffering regarding the horrors he had witnessed in his homeland, especially as a child.
“However, in the final analysis of all the evidence here, the applicant’s defense was actually a highly improbable account from a totally unreliable and false source,” he said.
The Ilechukwu legal team, Mr. Eugene Thuraisingam, Mr. Suang Wijaya, Mr. Johannes Hadi and Ms. Jerrie Tan, said in a statement: “It has been a long and close pro bono case, involving psychiatric evidence. specialized and intercultural issues “. sensitivities.
“Had it not been for the serendipitous production of the IMH report, our client would have been sentenced to death or life imprisonment.”
It is understood that the Nigerian embassy is making arrangements for Ilechukwu, who has been in detention since his arrest, to depart for Lagos on the next available flight.
[ad_2]
