A nominee of the President to the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Yaw Appau, has said that as far as he is concerned the Ya Na murder trial is a closed case.
He said unless fresh evidence was adduced, the chapter on the case was closed.
He said as a trial judge in the matter, he did not think that enough evidence was provided linking the accused persons to the murder.
Mr Justice Apau stated this when he appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament yesterday.
His vetting took more than five hours.
According to Mr Justice Apau, what led to the murder of the Ya Na was a three-day communal war and added that it was during the euphoria that prevailed that members of the victorious faction beheaded the Dagbon overlord.
He said it was difficult to successfully try people for murder, if the unlawful premeditated killing occurred in a war situation.
Mr Justice Apau said one person, who clearly was not even a the scene of the dastardly acts that occurred, was brought before court and charged with the murder.
Another, he said, was accused of conspiracy when the persons he conspired with could neither be named nor identified.
Under the circumstances, he said, they had to be discharged.
Death penalty Touching on the death penalty, Mr Justice Apau said that he did not believe that the death penalty was the right punishment for a convicted murderer.
According to him, much as the death sentence may be seen in a wider sense as fair, it did not deter people from committing murder.
Mr Justice Apau said the death sentence was derived from the biblical Mosaic law which called for "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
“I am against the death penalty; one as a Christian because it is retributive and secondly because it does not deter. It is an aspect of the Mosaic Law," he said.
Members of the committee had sought to know from him whether he believed in the death penalty or not.
Mr Justice Apau, who is currently an Appeal Court judge, said once the Bible spoke against taking the life of a fellow man, there was no need to deprive anyone of his or her life because he or she had committed murder.
"Vengeance is the Lord’s," he said.
" If somebody has killed, why should the state also kill when the Ten Commandments said thou shall not kill?” he asked.
He said there was no need to"make laws to kill." Rather, he said, convicted murderers needed to be confined and whether they live or die was left in the hands of God.
"If we tie them to the stakes and shoot them, we will be going against the Ten Commandments, " he said.
Mr Justice Apau, who until recently was the Sole Commissioner appointed by the President to investigate the phenomenon of judgement debts, admitted that there was corruption in the judicial arm of government.
He was, however, quick to explain that it was not judges who were corrupt but some judicial service staff and lawyers.
He said all investigations carried out in the past had not found any evidence of corruption on the part of any judge.
According to him, some judicial service staff, such as clerks, collected monies from parties to a dispute, on the pretext of giving it to judges and pocketed such monies.
It was those workers, he said, who corrupted the judicial system and not judges.
GFA Mr Justice Apau said he found it very difficult to understand why the Ghana Football Association (GFA) could not be investigated by the government over public funds.
"If money has been voted for the GFA to run the association, the money is not for the GFA. It is for the country, Ghana because GFA is a subset of the country. It is Ghana that finances the activities of the GFA. When the national teams are going outside the country, they go to the Minister of Youth and Sports who will also run to the Ministry of Finance to look for money to run the association”.
“Why is it that when money comes from FIFA, they don’t want the government to know what happened to that money? So, I always question it. I find it very difficult to understand that position", he said
In his opinion, once public funds have been awarded to a particular institution to execute a given task, that institution must be held accountable for every single pesewa spent.
“If money is voted for the GFA and it is misapplied or not properly managed, it affects our national teams and it affects the country because our passion is football”, he averred.
He said though the government could not directly involve itself in the running of the GFA, it has a role to play to ensure that there is transparency in the management of public funds voted to them.
“There should be at least a relationship, though not directly in managing GFA but GFA should be accountable, particularly with regard to public funds awarded them”, he emphasised
For instance, he said when the senior national team, the Black Stars, were going to Brazil to participate in the 2014 World Cup, the GFA fell on the government for funding after which it was later reimbursed.
However, he said if that money had been invested in other economic ventures, the government would have earned some interest on it.
In his view, once there is a direct relationship between the GFA and the government, the latter has the responsibility to ensure that the football body is held accountable.
“I am not saying there should be direct interference but at least something has to be done”, he said.
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