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National Court of Papua New Guinea |
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
[IN THE NATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE]
CR NO. 1642 OF 1996
THE STATE
-V-
GODFREY EDWIN AHUPA
POPONDETTA: KIRRIWOM J.
1998: 18, 19 & 20 MAY
CRIMINAL LAW - Wilful murder - Denial - Lack of motive - Denial of husband/wife relationship.
SENTENCE - Diliherate and vicious attack of victim - Life imprisonment.
Counsel:
C. Sambua, for the State
J. Ulge, for the Accused
20 May 1998
KIRRIWOM J.: GODFREY EDWIN AHUPA of Hohorita, Popondetta stands charged that he on the 6 May 1995 at Igora Oil Palm Blocks, Popondetta in Papua New Guinea wilfully murdered one ONA THOMPSON, thereby contravening s.299 of the Criminal Code.
The brief facts are that the deceased Ona Thompson was at her father's block at Igora with her mother Maria Thompson, her sister Sylvia Thompson and other relatives on the morning of 6 May 1995.
Accused arrived between 10:00 am and 12:00 midday and asked those in the block if they had received "his message". He repeated his question three times and Maria Thompson answered that she never received any message.
Accused then directed his question to his wife, Ona Thompson, and asked if she remembered "something" he told her before. She did not respond and he repeated himself again for the second time. After the third time he struck her on her back with the flat side of the bush-knife in his hand. Ona ran away and climbed onto the house-win where her sister Sylvia was but the accused pursued her. He swung his bush-knife at her and cut her on her arm when she lifted up her hand to fend off the knife blow. Then he delivered three successive blows to his wife's head and climbed down from the house-win, picked up and axe and carrying both the bush-knife and the axe he left the block challenging anyone who dared to fight him. A vehicle from the community was secured to transport Ona Thompson to the Popondetta General Hospital. But she died shortly after arrival at the hospital. The accused on the other hand escaped and remained at large for over one year until 8 October 1996 when he was apprehended at Bareveturu Village and charged with this offence of the murder of his wife.
The accused pleaded not guilty to this charge. Not only that he denied committing this murder but he also denied being at Igora Oil Palm Blocks on this day or at all throughout that year 1995, he denied ever being married to the deceased and denied knowing the deceased as a woman in his life for a period of two years, when they cohabited as husband and wife. It seemed therefore that the defence case was run on the basis that this was a case of mistaken identity because the accused was never at Igora Oil Palm Blocks on this day or ever at all. He maintained for the entire year of 1995 he lived in Bareveturu which is his mother's village.
State called two eye-witnesses to the incident at Igora Oil Palm Blocks on the morning of Saturday 6 May 1995. They were Mrs Maria Thompson, step-mother of the deceased and Sylvia Thompson, elder sister of the deceased. Deceased Ona Thompson was attacked in front of their own eyes by the accused with a bush-knife about ½ meter long between 10 and 11 am in the morning. The step-mother Maria was cooking and both Sylvia and Ona were just there when the accused arrived with a bush-knife in his hand. He enquired dryly of those present including Maria, it was a general question not directed specifically at Maria, as to whether they had received "his message" that he had sent. He repeated himself several times and Maria responded saying that they never got his message. Whatever this message was is not in evidence. He then turned to his wife, Ona and asked if she remembered "something" that he told her (whatever it was is also not in evidence). According to the evidence of Sylvia Thompson, this is what the accused said to the deceased: "Lady banana, do you still remember what I told you before?" (Whatever is the meaning of this question is not in evidence). Ona did not respond. He repeated several times and then struck her with the flat side of a bush-knife on her back. She ran away and climbed up to where her elder sister was in the wind-house. He pursued her there, chopped her once on her left arm with the sharp edge of the blade and again delivered three heavy and successive blows to her head. He then jumped down and further armed himself with an axe and walked away from the hamlet challenging anyone who dared to fight him to take him on. After the accused had left, Maria sent the boys to the nearby community to inform them of what happened and for transport assistance to take her daughter to the hospital. The deceased was already dying from the severe deep cuts to her head.
There is not much variance in the evidence of the only two eye-witnesses of the State. Generally they are consistent and they corroborate each other in the most important aspects of the evidence. At the time of this attack Maria's husband and the girl's father Tom Grayson was in Popondetta town. So was Sylvia's husband Collin. He works in the Oil Palm. She lives with her husband in Mumuri Village but on Friday she went to Igora blocks to visit her parents where she spent the night. The trouble happened in the morning of the following day which was Saturday. She maintained that she had no hard-feelings against the accused. She was in Court to give her story because the accused killed her sister. She said the accused was married to her sister. They were married for two years but that marriage appeared to have been a stormy one with constant domestic quarrels and fights. There being no bride price paid so their father was unhappy with the treatment his daughter was receiving at the hands of the accused, he took her back to live with him at the block. According to Sylvia the accused also lived at the blocks. In other words the accused went after his wife and resided there as well. On this particular Saturday morning he was there at the block at Igora where he was staying when he attacked the deceased. This is one small variance in the evidence of Sylvia and Maria because Maria said that the accused does not sleep at the block but he comes and goes from time to time. So on this particular morning he turned up at the block either from Hohorita which is closer to Igora blocks or from Isivini Block where his in-law lives which is even closer or from Bavereturu village which is some distance away, but he did not sleep at the block at Igora. I do not regard this discrepancy in their evidence as crucial. If the deceased is the accused's wife who was at her parents block, human nature being such that the husband must go to his wife and it is not improbable that the accused had been visiting the deceased and even spending time at the block from time to time. All these people, the accused and the witnesses are related in that they all belong to the same village of Hohorita except that the Thompson Family lives at Igora Oil Palm where the father has a block there. They are therefore not strangers to each other.
The accused gave sworn evidence. His evidence basically was that he did not commit this murder because he was living in Bavereturu village for the entire 1995 working on his cocoa and coffee garden. On the morning of 6 May 1995 till lunch he was working the coffee/cocoa gardens with his cousins Jamen Brian, Warren Takuna, Bobby Takuna and Graham Erick. There is no doubt that these are potential alibi witnesses. Although Notice was given under the Criminal Practice Rules to give evidence of alibi defence, neither of the witnesses named in the alibi notice was called nor anyone of those other persons named above were called to give evidence of alibi.
So at the conclusion of both the State and Defence case, I have to decide on the guilt or innocence of the accused on the evidence of two-eye witnesses to the murder supported by the Medical Report and an uncontested statement of a police witness who apprehended the accused at Bareveturu village on 8 October 1996 between 4:00 and 6:00 am in a police raid on the village, and on the sworn evidence of the accused himself. The record of interview of the accused was also admitted by consent but there are no admissions except that it supports the defence of alibi generally.
The issue before me is whether the accused is the person responsible for the death of the deceased Ona Thompson.
These facts appear to be uncontested:
The evidence in the State case establishes that the deceased once either married or probably maintained a short-lived relationship with a man called Nopiri Sesere from Waria in the Morobe Province. However, when it was discovered by the family that she was involved with a married man, they took her back from the man thus ending that brief relationship. Following that the deceased got married to the accused from Hohorita village. This marriage was however riddled with constant quarrels and domestic upheavals at home. This on-going problems in the marriage resulted in her being removed from the accused by her family and returned to the family hamlet at Igora. There is uncertainty as to whether or not the marriage ended altogether between the parties although there is some suggestion that the accused "came and went" from time to time to the block presumably to see the deceased (evidence from Maria Thompson). However Sylvia's evidence is that the accused lived at Igora block with the deceased. This relationship was maintained for a period of some two years between the two and both Sylvia and Maria are quite adamant about this. The death of the deceased comes about in this general surrounding and the evidence points more towards killing by an enraged husband or former husband arising from continuing marital discord or from rejection.
The history of the case giving rise to the injuries sustained by the deceased was noted by the doctor who attended the deceased upon admission just hours after the attack as "domestic argument at home". This post-mortem report is dated 29 May 1995 following the autopsy that was done on 12 May 1995. There is no doubt therefore that on the day of the admission of the deceased at the hospital, the background information of the case given to the admitting doctor was that of "domestic related violence" and it was so recorded. There is therefore consistency between what was then recorded and what was deposed to by the witnesses in Court before me. This eliminates room for fabrication or recent invention.
Defence contends that this is a case of mistaken identity because for the whole of 1995 the accused lived in Bareveturu. This village is far away from Igora blocks and he could not have been there to commit this crime raising alibi. In other words what the defence was implying here (it was not specifically put to the witnesses) that if the witnesses are not mistaken in identifying the accused as the attacker, then they are deliberately framing the accused to bear the blame for someone else's doing. It was never suggested to Maria and Sylvia that their story was fabricated to implicate the accused in this crime. It was not even suggested that they were telling untruths and why there were telling untruths about the accused. So all I have before me is almost uncontradicted evidence of the accused chopping the deceased with a bush-knife and the accused denying being responsible let alone being anywhere near where this incident happened without giving any reason or explanation as to why Maria and Sylvia may be lying in their evidence about him.
As stated earlier, the witnesses and the accused are from the same village of Hohorita and they all know each other well. The alleged attack took place in broad day-light between 10:00 and 11:00 am. There is no dispute about the time of the day and there is even no suggestion that visibility was hampered in anyway by obstruction of shrubs, sea of people of houses. There can be no case of mistaken identify in a situation like this. If the accused is not the attacker, then the witnesses must be lying and there must be a reason for their lying. The accused had not established by evidence of any motive for the witnesses to be lying about him. He maintained that he did not attack the deceased although he conceded that they are from the same village but he is not related to her. He said she is from a different clan to his. When asked about this relationship to the deceased, this is what he said:
Q. Do you know Ona Thompson?
A. Yes.
Q. Who is she?
A. She is from another clan and I belong to another. I do not know how she is related to me.
Q. You never go to Ona Thompson's place?
A. No.
He was also asked if he knew the Thompson family and he replied he did. He said they were from the same village but different clans. And then he was asked if he was married and he replied no and he further denied having any girlfriends. He was then further asked about his arrest by the police. These are questions in examination in chief:
Q. Is there any conflict between your clan and Ona's clan?
A. No.
Q. Do you know when you were arrested?
A. When I was apprehended, I was shocked. I do not know what trouble I made to be arrested by the Police.
Q. Recall when you were arrested?
A. October 1996.
Q. You know Ona Thompson?
A. Yes. We are from the same village.
Q. Do you know if she has been married to any one?
A. Yes.
Q. Who was she married to?
A. Nopiri Sesere.
Q. Where is Nopiri Sesere?
A. His wife killed him.
Q. When?
A. End of 1996 or early 1997
Q. How long was Ona married to Nopiri Sesere?
A. Nopiri Sesere had a first wife and Ona was the second wife.
This is the evidence going to show the relationship of the parties in this case and their knowledge of each other. There is no doubt therefore that the case of mistaken identity is ruled out. Therefore what it really boils down to in this case is the credibility of the witnesses. Who is telling the truth and who is not. I am mindful of the authorities that sound out the caution that a tribunal of fact must exercise when addressing this delicate issue of lying witnesses whose evidence can be quite as convincing. Some of these cases are State v Manneseh Voeto [1978] PNGLR 119 and State v Mole Manipe & Ors [1979] unreported. The same kind of warning that is often alluded to in the identification evidence that a mistaken witness could be a convincing one is equally applicable when a judge is dealing with set of facts which are in direct contradictions with each other.
This is not a complicated trial. Thus the issue of credibility of witnesses is not altogether complex when viewed in the overall context of the case before me. Having closely observed and assessed the demeanour of witnesses as each gave his or her evidence in Court, in totality I am quite impressed by the evidence of both Maria Thompson and Sylvia Thompson. They had no hard-feelings or grudges against the accused. He was their in-law. The only reason why they were in Court was to tell the truth which was that the accused killed deceased, someone close to their hearts. They were well composed confident and quite natural in the way they presented themselves while in the witness box and gave no impression in anyway such as to suggest that they were lying as to the substance of their evidence. There may be some discrepancies here and there about the clothes worn by the various persons on that day including the accused and the accused's visits or residing at the block at Igora but on the whole their evidence as to the identity of the accused as the attacker remained very much intact and undisturbed in cross-examination. There was no suggestion that they were living or why there were lying. Their evidence describing the blows to the arm and the head of the deceased are supported by the medical report which identified altogether four wounds to the body of the deceased:
The cause of death was attributed to crania-cerebral injury secondary to hacked wounds to the head and forearm.
I therefore accept the evidence of Maria Thompson and Sylvia Thompson which is credible and highly probable of belief as to what happened. I find both witnesses reliable, they were honest, they had no motive to lie, they had not reason to implicate the accused in the death of their relative if he was not the murderer, given the fact that they belonged to the same village and in my view they told the truth in this trial.
The accused had not impressed me at all. I find his denial of the charge, without at least making some concessions, to be reflective of his overall state of mind of an unrepentant and bewildered person. His whole story is incredible and quite extraordinary when viewed in the light of the overall case particularly when he refutes everything in the State case including his "marriage" to or relationship with the deceased. It is just too good to be true. If the accused can deny his marriage to the deceased amidst strong evidence of the existence of such relationship, then there must be a reason for his lying. On this aspect alone I do not accept the accused as a witness of truth. Besides he has not produced any evidence to substantiate his defence of alibi. This failure is not only crucial to the defence case, it also goes to the question of credit of the accused as witness not only in relation to his alibi defence but also in relation to other contentious areas where he takes issues with the State's evidence. I therefore do not accept his story.
Given these observations of the demeanour of the witnesses and the analysis of the facts as presented, I find as follows on the facts before me:
Wilful murder is the most serious of all homicide cases under the Criminal Code. It is very serious because it involves pre-planning, an intention and the carrying out of that intention into action. Wilful murder therefore entails an intention (mens rea) to kill someone and with that intention to kill that person he brings about (acteus reas) or into fruition that intention with one's full knowledge of his action.
Has the State in the case proven to my entire satisfaction as to the guilt of the accused of wilful murder? The story given by the two witnesses supported by the medical report have not been mitigated by any contradicting evidence to weaken the strength of their evidence. There is thus no doubt in my mind that when the accused turned up at Igora block that morning with his bush-knife, he went there with an evil purpose. And his purpose for going there can be deduced from the questions he asked of those persons present when he got there. It seems obvious that there was a rift between him and the deceased and her family and he went there with an evil purpose to do harm. This is reflected in the number of times he chopped the deceased on her head with the sharp-blade of his bush-knife. It is common sense that when someone attacks any living thing with a sharp object in a volatile part of the body repeatedly and maliciously, it goes without saying that he wants to terminate that life. Thus, when the accused struck the deceased three times on the head with his bush-knife causing some of the brain tissues to ooze out of the fractured skull, he intended to do that and he did so deliberately and he intended that she should die. This is sufficient evidence of wilful act of the accused. The intended end result of this violent attack is death and that is why this murder is wilful and deliberate which places it at the highest end of the scale of homicides.
Intention is not something you can prove by direct evidence. You have to draw from all the evidence or proved facts as to the existence of intention. And the case of The State v Wanaepe Warara [1977] PNGLR 458 (Prentice, Dep. CJ) (as he then was) provides a very useful authority and also some guidance. It is important for the Court to note the state of mind of the accused, what he says before the act, the location of the wound and the type of weapon used. A bush-knife is a weapon that can kill without any doubt.
In this case I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of the charge contained in the indictment because when he struck the deceased four times with his bush-knife, once on the left forearm and three times on her head, he intended by these blows that she should die from those blows and as the result of those blows she died within 1 to 2 hours of that same day following the attack, at Popondetta General Hospital.
I therefore return a verdict of guilty of wilful murder against the accused.
22 May 1998
Sentence
You were found guilty of wilfully murdering Ona Thompson, a woman, whom witnesses who gave evidence in this case against you said was your wife. You denied that she was your wife and you claimed to be a single man but on the evidence before me I found this to be not true.
The deceased Ona Thompson was your common law or de facto wife whom you lived with for a time and she was not a complete stranger to you as you tried to have me believe. I think it was stupid and very arrogant of you to try to evade criminal culpability of your wilful act by denying that special relationship you enjoyed or once enjoyed and cherished with the deceased. I think it was also quite naïve of you to pretend that you did not know the deceased, after bringing about her death, perhaps thinking that by doing so you were cutting of any nexus between yourself and her brutal death so that you did not come under any suspicion at all for her murder. I think it was quite foolhardy on you to have imagined that anyone would buy or believe a story like that. This is where you were wrong.
Wilful murder is the most serious crime known to mankind. It involves the termination of a life of a human being by a fellow human being in a wilful and deliberate way by means or method sometimes under the circumstances that are violent, barbaric, gruesome, revolting, cruel, painful and sometimes painless. In this case you struck at the deceased with your bush-knife four times. She put up no resistance nor did she provoke you in any way. This is clearly a cold-blooded murder. She just sat there and you hacked her as if you were chopping up firewood. She did not fight you or argue with you. According to the evidence, there was only a handful of women there when you arrived and carried out your cold-blooded attack and what chance did a bunch of defenseless women have against a maniac like you armed with a bush-knife? You ought to be very ashamed of yourself of using a bush-knife to express your feelings to a defenseless and helpless woman who could not fight back under any circumstances.
You showed no mercy nor compassion for her. There is doubt that you are a very violent and dangerous man. Your ultimate action that ended the deceased's life clearly supports the evidence of Sylvia Thompson that it was your constant violent assaults upon the deceased that led to the family removing her away from you. They feared that something more fatal or sinister may happen if she was not rescued quickly. But this did not deter you from pursuing her and ending her young life in the presence of her family members and at the family hamlet in Igora except for the father.
This is no doubt a very bad case of homicide, if not a worst. You pleaded for leniency and asked for a good behaviour bond. You said you will pay compensation if the Court ordered you to do so instead of going to prison. I think you must be mad to even imagine that you can walk out of this Court room on a good behaviour bond after mercilessly hacking up someone to death and ending her young life prematurely in such a brutal and cowardly manner. It is obvious that this is a reflection of your lack of appreciation of and respect for the sanctity of human life. You referred me to a biblical quotation in the Book of St. Mathew Chapter 77 in support of your plea for leniency. But the same Bible in the Book of Genesis also says: "Do no commit murder" (Exodus 20:1-17). The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai is the source of all laws that mankind has observed from that period to this day after the birth of Christ.
You are a young man of 28 years old. Both your parents are dead and you have three sisters who are older than you and who are married with their own families. You are the only boy in the family. You expressed concern for your cocoa/and coffee gardens at Bareveturu, your mother's village and also at Hohorita, your father's village. You also have coconuts and betel nuts. Land is a very precious wealth in Papua New Guinea customary society you said. You are therefore worried about your land in these two places, being the only boy in your family. Ironically you never thought about your future and your land at the time you abruptly ended the life of the deceased who was only 22 years old. She did not have to die. She had a long life ahead of her as well. If you had any problem with her or with her family, there are more civilised ways of solving differences. We have laws that deal with different situations. There are institutions that address different kinds of disputes and problems, such as this Court for example. All these avenues are there and available for your convenience. We are not living in stone-age any more, we are a civilised people governed by laws that we have in place passed by our own Parliament comprising of our own democratically elected representatives. And this very same democratically elected Parliament had in its wisdom decreed by amendment No.25 of 1991, that the maximum penalty for wilful murder which was life imprisonment is now substituted with sentence of death. Subsection (2) of s.299 of the Criminal Code reads: "a person who commits wilful murder shall be liable to be sentenced to death". And s.597 spells out how the sentence of death shall be executed and that is you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. This is not a legislative mistake or an accident. Parliament does not make mistake. This amendment has been deliberately enacted because our elected representatives considered that life imprisonment for wilful murder was not enough. They wanted tougher laws to deal with murderers like you because senseless and indiscriminate killings of human beings by fellow human beings are becoming prevalent throughout the country.
You are young and dangerous man. Your lawyer quite rightly conceded that there is very little that can be said in mitigation on your behalf. In the allocutus you said you were sorry to the Court and to the community. I think you got yourself all mixed up because the Court is not the one that is wronged to receive your apology. The deceased to whom you must express your remorse cannot hear you apologise to her. If dead people can return from their graves to forgive their murderers, you will definitely not be seen because you showed no remorse whatsoever throughout this case until conviction. Your remorse, howsoever meant, is thus meaningless, it is hollow and not genuine.
Your lawyer, despite this being such a hopeless case in so far as mitigation of penalty is concerned, has strongly pleaded for leniency on your behalf and urged me not to impose the maximum penalty provided by law, which is death. He submitted that I should impose a determinate sentence to one of indeterminate life sentence. He submitted that the maximum penalty must be reserved for the worst wilful murder case and this is not the worst case. But the State lawyer has urged upon me to impose the maximum penalty of death, saying that this is a worst case. This is probably one of those few times seen recently where the State has not joined forces with the defence to plead for a punishment other than death. Therefore, if the State does urge me to impose the most dreaded penalty of death upon you, surely this must be a worst case. What is then a worse case of wilful murder? How worse must a wilful murder be to be a worst case to justify being met with the dreaded maximum penalty of death sentence, as being the worst case of wilful murder? I know different judges have already expressed views on this philosophical question which I do not have the benefit of citing them as a Circuit Judge here in Popondetta with very little library material to get by with. But I share their sentiments.
I have been cited the case of Ure Hane v The State (1984) PNGLR, 105 particularly as to the relevant considerations on sentences in wilful murder cases under those categories that the Supreme Court there was trying to formulate. Ure Hane a well educated man and a first offender was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, which was the maximum at the time for repeatedly stabbing his wife or de facto to death with a sharp pointed knife. He did not deny it. He confessed to the killing and explained the circumstances under which he did what he did. The trial Judge who was presented with all the exceptional circumstances that clearly warranted special consideration, brushed aside those matters and penalised him heavily on the fact that he was an educated man and he should have known better. Because of the special circumstances in his case, the Supreme Court upheld his appeal and reduced his sentence from maximum life to a determine term of years.
In Goli Golu v The State [1979] PNGLR 653 the appellant was also well educated man with an unblemished record. He was convicted and sentenced to the maximum life for killing the deceased in the precincts of the Court House at Kwikila. On the day of this killing, two opposing factions or clans attended the Kwikila Court for court proceedings against some of them following a riot between the two groups over land dispute. On this day of the hearing of their cases extra police were deployed to maintain maximum security and peace. Notwithstanding this tight security the appellant sneaked in with a knife undetected and in the presence of all the policemen there he stabbed the deceased whom he did not personally have any grudges against other than that he was a member of the opposing clan. The trial Judge placed emphasis on the prevalence or rising trend of killings taking place within the Court precincts which showed total disrespect for the Court and sentenced him to the maximum of life imprisonment. The Supreme Court upheld his appeal and substituted a determinate sentence because it felt that the life term was disproportionate to the circumstances of the crime.
The difference between those two cases and the one before me is that the maximum sentence for wilful murder now is death, not life imprisonment as was then.
The Supreme Court sitting in Kimbe recently in November 1997 confirmed a life sentence imposed upon an appellant a first offender, who was charged with the wilful murder of a little child of 2 years old by chopping the child's neck with a bush-knife. The appellant who was a relative had a disagreement with his uncle, the father of the deceased. He harboured his feelings within him for sometime until he saw his uncle's wife returning from the garden one day with her two year old son. He grabbed the little child from the mother and cut his neck. He then tried to kill himself by hanging but did not succeed when the police arrived and cut the rope from which he was dangling to die. Supreme Court was of the view that the deceased was an innocent victim. The appellant deserved the maximum of death and he had no reason to complain against life sentence.
Your case is a bad one, not only because of the number of blows you delivered to the head of the deceased which houses the brain, the most important organ in the anatomy of a human body, and which clearly demonstrates your intention and determination to end her life there and then, but you also have a record of doing time in prison before for manslaughter. This is therefore not your first encounter with the law. You were sentenced to two years imprisonment, according to the police Antecedent Report, in 1987 for manslaughter. There is not much information on this but the truth of it is not denied. Manslaughter is also homicide, it is still killing of another human being in any event. Looking at the circumstances under which your present crime was perpetrated, it is quite obvious to me that you have never learnt from your first experience in prison. Human life, it seems from your conduct means nothing to you. Your action is symptomatic of a person with psychopathic disorder or tendency to commit crimes of violence. I think I will be doing the society a complete injustice if I did not lock you up for a long time in prison. Senseless and merciless killings are becoming quite prevalent. Courts have been accused of being over lenient in their sentences in some of those cases that deserved nothing but condemnation. Only last month in Waigani the National Court sent a policeman to life imprisonment for procuring the murder of his wife. He paid some money to some people and promised to give them a high-powered firearm if they killed his wife. Then, acting according to the plan he made with them, he deliberately set his wife up when he left the car and went into a shop at this rendezvous point leaving the wife and the two children sitting in the car. Whilst he was inside the shop, his accomplices struck and blew her head off with a shot-gun at point blank range.
But when you look at all these cases of deliberate and calculated murders, whether they involved pre-planning or not, whether they were carried out swiftly and quickly or slowly and in the most gruesome and barbaric or agonising manner, or whether the victims are gunned down, axed, knife or clubbed to death by heavy or blunt objects, the end result is all the same, a human life has been prematurely terminated.
There was no evidence given in mitigation to explain your conduct although I appreciate that you denied any involvement in this killing, so I really do not know the motive for your actions. I therefore cannot give your case the same consideration from you, your case is clearly a senseless and unnecessary cold-blooded murder. Such being the case you do not deserve any special consideration for leniency. It thus deserve the maximum penalty of death. However, in the exercise of my discretion, I am sentencing you to life.
Lawyer for the State: Public Prosecutor
Lawyer for the Defence: Public Solicitor
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