ODURO V. THE STATE

LASSEY J.A.

The appellant was on 12 November 1965 convicted at the Kumasi Criminal Session of the murder of Akosua Kraa, his wife. He has appealed to this court on the substantial ground of misdirection by non-direction, contending that the learned trial judge had wrongly directed the jury upon the law of provocation by failing to tell them the effect which the insulting words of abuse alleged to have been uttered by the deceased and accompanying the slap which she gave the appellant was likely to have had on the appellant, and that had they been rightly directed, they might have found him guilty, not of murder, but of manslaughter only.

The case itself concerns one of the near-domestic disputes which often happen between husband and wife’ who live in the rural or farming areas in this country; the relevant facts so far as they bear on the question of provocation may be briefly stated. On or about 18 July 1965 the appellant, who was the deceased’s husband and residing at another villag…