THE QUEEN V. ZAKWAKWA OF YORRO

HUBBARD, F.J (Delivering the Judgment of the Court):

This is an appeal by Zakwakwa of Yorro against his conviction on a charge of murder. The appeal succeeds on two grounds.

In the first place, the appellant was charged in the information with murdering a woman named Zonvanya on some day in the month of June 1959. The evidence for the prosecution, however, is of the murder of one Zonvanya on 8th January, 1959. L/Cpl. Umoru Gwanmare Zinna and Isaac Pim, the S.U.M. Dispensary Attendant at Zinna, both say they saw the dead body of Zonvanya, the former on 8th January 1959, the latter on 9th January. This is not a case in which it is obvious that there has been some clerical error or where an illiterate witness’s use of the name of a month, which he does not understand, can be corrected by a reference in his evidence, say, to some well-known season of his agricultural year. Whatever may be the case with LJCpl. Umoru, the Dispensary Attendant, Isaac Pim, was presumably sufficiently literate t…