[ 2014-12-25 ]

Lawyer accuses judge of abusing legal process in Kwaw Kese case
Private Legal practitioner Kwame Akuffo has
condemned a court in Kumasi for refusing to grant
hiplife artiste Kwaw Kese accused of smoking
cannabis, bail.

According to the lawyer, there is no provision in
the Ghanaian constitution which forbids bail in
narcotics-related offences. He, therefore, does
not understand why the rapper has consistently
been denied bail.

Born Emmanuel Botwe, Kwaw Kese was arrested on
Saturday, November 22 by the police at Nhyiaeso in
Kumasi in the Ashanti Region. He is facing charges
for smoking weed.

Three attempts by the rapper to get bail have been
refused by both the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly
(KMA) Court and the Kumasi High Court. He has been
remanded at the Kumasi Central Prison and will
reappear in court on January 5, 2015.

Commenting on the development on Joy News, Kwame
Akuffo said that the law which formed the basis
for the courts' refusal to grant Kwaw Kese bail is
grounded on the New Patriotic Party's panic
amendment of the criminal code.

“There is no part of our constitution which
forbids bail in narcotic offences. The reason
behind some judges’ attitude towards bail is
founded on some panic reaction of the NPP
government in 2007 when there were all these
allegations that the party was involved [in]
helping people peddle drugs and therefore passed
an amendment in the criminal code which said that
some offences were non-bailable,” he said.

The legal practitioner stressed that, “strictly
speaking, there is no part of the constitution
which says that a man cannot be admitted to bail
because he is charged of narcotic offences.”

He noted that, “in Kwaw Kese’s case for
example, if a judge were to find him guilty of
[using] a narcotic drug, the judge has the
discretion to sentence him even to a day's
imprisonment and fine him on a 100 penalty point
basis.”

Kwame Akuffo wondered why the rapper is still
being detained, saying, “apart from burdening
the taxpayer with feeding an extra prisoner, it
also amounts to a complete abuse of the
process.”

He explained further that per Article 296 of the
Constitution, any time a person is vested with a
decision that revolves around discretion, that
decision ought to be “exercised judiciously,
fairly and not capriciously.”

“If the man has been kept for a month and the
trial has not begun, why are we keeping him in
there? What do we gain? What is the benefit to
society [for] keeping Kwaw Kese or any other
Ghanaian citizen who has been caught smoking weed
in 2014 in prison?” the legal practitioner
quizzed.

Source - Joy News

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