Circumstantial evidence says it’s murder, sir!

Media frenzy over the death of Chris Ade, a 37-year old man whose remains were found in a hotel, had been very huge and unsettling. As Police Detective and Head of its Legal Division, Muhammadu Kura sat on the swivel chair in his office at Kam Salem Police Headquarters this Wednesday afternoon, he reflected on his encounter with the Inspector General of Police about 40 hours back. The media had literally dragged the IG off his fanny to begin to take drastic actions. The social media had already given its own judgment, hanging accused persons on the crucifix. In an apparent move to deflect the arrows being daily shot at the police, the IG had summoned Kura to his office and literally threw the huge file that contained all the investigated details of the death at him.

As Kura wondered what this whole drama was all about, the Inspector General had thundered in a baritone:  “The President of the Republic has been inundated with calls about this case. There are allegations that we wanted to cover up evil doers. Pathologists have said thatChris Ade probably died of natural causes and we won’t have a case against the accused in court. Kura, you are a wizard in criminal law, apart from being one of the best detectives police in Nigeria today. I am interested in charging the accused to court. Go through the file and give me your recommendation in 48 hours. Thank you and have a good day.”

Muhammadu Kura was indeed police’s best investigator and lawyer. With a Master’s degree in Criminology from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the 42-year old Kanuri-born Superintendent of Police was also a lawyer, his turf being Criminal Law. He pored through the huge file of documents, acquainting himself with the facts of the case and making notes.

The facts of Chris’ death were already in the public domain. A postgraduate student of a university in the town where he was allegedly killed, he had lodged in the hotel named Valley. In a very curious twist, the hotel management had made all attempts to hide the fact of his lodgment with it. It was only when police investigations found this out that the receptionist, the first suspect in the case, and other accomplices, led police officers to a bush where Tim was buried. This led to the arrest of the alleged accomplices and owner of the hotel, Chief Adetayo with huge allegations made that Chris might have been used for rituals. The alibi of the receptionist suspect and other alleged accomplices was that, they had found Chris dead early in the morning of the second day of his lodgment and had spirited his corpse to the outskirts of the city to hide linkage of his death to the hotel.

Kura then brought out a copy of the autopsy report conducted on Chris’ body and began to examine it. For almost an hour, the top police officer ruminated on the autopsy report. While medicine doubted the cause of Chris’ death, Kura wondered if law could doubt why he died. The first point of attraction for him was the broken femur of Chris’  body. What could have led to the fracture? Granted that pathologists claimed that the internal and external organs of the deceased were untouched, were they aware that in the occultic world, the blood of the victim was as germane to rituals more than any other part?

Still puffing crazily at his cigarette, Kura walked to the bookshelf in his office and brought out one of his text books on Criminal Law. He flipped the pages to a section called Circumstantial Evidence and began to read like one readying for an examination. The case that came to his attention was Adepetu v The State which lawyers always cite in justifying circumstantial evidence. It was the case of one Olusola Adepetu, a renowned herbal traditional practitioner in Oyo State in the 1990s.

Adepetu had been befriending one Miss Ranti Moradeyo and on the night of November 20, 1990, had gone to the lady’s house, picked her to  God-knows-where.  She was never seen alive thereafter. The next day, her corpse was found in the Sanyo area on the Lagos-Ibadan highway. Whoever placed it there wanted vehicles to have mutilated the body in pieces, so that the fact of severance of her body parts for rituals would be hidden for life. Adepetu was subsequently charged to the Oyo State High Court and the trial judge, piecing together circumstantial evidence, including the doctrine of “the last seen,” had convicted Adepetu according to Section 319(1) of the Criminal Code Cap 30 Laws of Oyo State 1978. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecution had called 19 witnesses. Following an overruling of the defence’s no-case submission, Adepetu gave evidence and called a single witness. The Appellate Court and the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, leading to Adepetu spending about 25 years in the Kirikiri Prison.

Circumstantial evidence, from what Kura read, is observed where “no direct evidence of an eyewitness to the commission of an offence is available.” The court then “may infer from the facts proved, the existence of other facts which logically and conclusively establish the guilt of the accused person beyond reasonable doubt. Accordingly, when strong circumstantial evidence is led against an accused in a criminal trial and this gives rise to an inference irresistibly warranted by such evidence, the criminal court will not hesitate to make such inference as long as it is so cogent and compelling.”

With all that Kura had gathered in the last 47 hours, he stood up like a drunk tottering on his drunken feet. In a sprint-like dash, hopped into the elevator of the Police headquarters and with a fidgety hand, pressed the last floor button that would take him to the zenith of the high rise building.

The IG was expecting him. He sat cupped in a chair by his conference table, his cap removed, showing an acute baldness with shards of grey hairs that looked like icing on a black cake surrounding his head.

Waffling initially but quickly picking himself up, SP Kura began: “Circumstantial evidence says it’s murder, sir and we can sustain the charge. The circumstances are indubitable and they all point at conspiracy to murder and murder. The chain of circumstances is this, sir: Immediately Chris entered Valley Hotel and paid N37,000 to the receptionist, the plot began. Oblivious of the power of technology and fate that made him call his wife as he was entering the hotel, the conspirators assumed that the fact of where he lodged would be concealed from investigators. Unfortunately, his account details revealed the payment. When detectives came to the hotel, the receptionist denied that Tim ever lodged there. It was upon interrogation that she spilled the beans and revealed other suspects.

“While the suspects’ alibi was that they found his dead body the next morning and shoveled it into the bush to disconnect the hotel from his death, it doesn’t add up and feeds into the line of a perfectly orchestrated conspiracy. If the fear of the dis-advertisement or bad publicity that a dead lodger would give the hotel were to be the major reason for their abstruse action, they should have known that in this modern age, since they purportedly didn’t have a hand in the death, an autopsy would have exonerated the hotel. Going to the length and the risk of taking Tim’s body to the bush is suspiciously incriminating enough and the circumstance pointing at murder and conspiracy.

“I interviewed a pathologist who told me that the “severe trauma” in the pathologists’ report is ambivalent and could as well mean that the deceased was hit with an object leading to his death. According to him, the decomposition of the internal organ could be as a result of a corrosive acid intentionally poured into the deceased’s mouth at death. The mark found by pathologists on his neck cannot be accidental as well. It could mean that he was strangled. If we had the carbon dating technology in Nigeria, it would have been easier to determine whether the wound on the remains’ neck was pre or after death. Chris’ was healthy, from evidence we gathered and not suffering from any illness.

“The disappearance of a major suspe ct in the alleged crime, said to be Chief Adetayo, the hotel owner’s son and one who allegedly participated in the process of taking Chris’ body into the forest, is a circumstantial thread that may link his father to the committal of the crime. We must ensure we bring him to book. We must get mobile phone service providers to give us Chief Adetayo’s call logs and all Chief’s call and discussions between the time Chris arrived the hotel and the time of the disposal of his corpse. How frequently did he speak with his son or any of the accused? What did they discuss? It is arrant nonsense to say that just because somebody was a typical Nigerian big man who established big hotels, he cannot be steeped in occultic practices. Indeed, more than half of Nigerian big men are ritualists – from politicians, to judges, to you-name-them,” Kura said.

While rounding off his submission, he said: “Inspector General sir, facts of circumstantial evidence tell me that we have a good case if we charge the hotel owner and the other accused to court for conspiracy and murder. We should not allow the image of the Police Force to be further dented by pussy-footing in walking to the justice chambers.”

As he did this, in a queer manner that suggested his belief in his submission, Kura stood up from his seat, made the traditional police salute in obeisance to the Inspector General, headed for the door and slammed it shut behind him.