LINUS CHIBUIKE
THE Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Friday, affirmed the death penalty imposed by a lower court on Maryam Sanda, who was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, son of a former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, in November 2017.
Justice Yusuf Halilu of the Abuja High Court in Maitama, had in a January 27, 2020 judgement, said circumstantial evidence proved that Maryam fatally stabbed her husband to death on November 19, 2017.
She was subsequently sentenced to death by hanging.
However, in a notice of appeal predicated on 20 grounds and filed by her legal team – Rickey Tarfa, SAN, Olusegun Jolaawo, SAN, Regina Okotie-Eboh and Beatrice Tarfa – Sanda had said the judgment of the trial court was “a miscarriage of justice.”
She said, “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 the trial or at any other time.
“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 a fair hearing of the defendant.”
Her lawyers also submitted that “the circumstantial evidence which the trial court relied upon in its application of the last seen doctrine does not lead to the conclusion that the defendant is responsible for the death of the deceased.”
