The Supreme Court considers government lawyers’ plead in the case involving the conviction of Gloria Scott and others as one based on presumption and assumption without establishing any evidence.
On Tuesday, July 16, 2024, the Justices blasted government lawyers or prosecution for failure to link the former Chief Justice and three of her family members to the crimes of murder.
During the arguments, the Justices asked prosecution whether the Liberian pathologist Benedict Kolee’s DNA analysis linked any of the defendants to the crimes of murder, criminal conspiracy and making false statement to law enforcement officer but Cllr. Bobby Livingstone said, their case theory was based on circumstantial evidence since the defendants failed to point out who did the killing.
The Supreme Justices were also concerned about each role played by the defendants during the commission of the crimes asking whether or not all of them took the knife to stab Charloe Musu as they were all convicted of the crime of Murder.
Cllr. Livingstone representing prosecution debunked the five issues raised by Cllr. Scott’s lawyers and sustained that there was no intruder discovered during the commission of the crimes as alleged by the defendants.
However, defense five key issues were whether or not the state met evidential standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” required by law to individually and collective convict the defendants of the capital crime of murder?
Alternatively, did the state establish a prima facie case against the defendants to warrant the entry of a judgment of conviction against them?
Representing the defendants, Cllr. Kabineh J’aneh claimed that state lawyers did not present one single eye witness to the perpetration of the crime of murder as alleged in the indictment.
He argued that the state proceeded to prove its case but failed to do so, beyond a reasonable doubt on the strength of conflicting forensic and circumstantial evidence adduced during the trial.
Did the trial judge commit reversible errors tantamount to depriving defendants charged with multiple crimes including murder of their rights to a fair and impartial trial when he denied each of the defendants to exercise 12 peremptory challenges as provided by law?
Was the trial judge order removing defendant Scott from her team of defense lawyers, an assault on the Cllr. Scott constitutional right to exercise the constitutional choice of legal representation including representing her in association with her team of defense lawyers?
