FRANCIS OBIDIKE & 5 OTHERS V. THE STATE

OLAGUNJU, JCA (Delivering the Lead Judgment): The six appellants were convicted of the offence of murder by Ezeani, J., of the Anambra State High Court, sitting at Otuocha of one Madueke Enweonye, whose corpse was not found and each appellant was sentenced to death at the end of a trial in which there was only an eye-witness on whose testimony and the circumstances deposed to by 10 other prosecution witnesses the conviction was based. First is the genesis of the event that is contemporaneous with the disappearance of Madueke Enweonye that became the subject of criminal prosecution, leading to the conviction and sentence of the appellants. There is a dispute among members of Isiokwe Anaku Community to which the families of the appellants and the deceased belong over a fishing pond called ‘Ikpi Fishing Pond’, the 1st appellant claiming that the pond belongs exclusively to his family while the family of the deceased maintaining that the pond belongs to the entire Isiokwe Anaku Communit…