NIGERIA. MAN TO DIE BY HANGING FOR KILLING OWN DAUGHTER

24 March 2006 :

a Sapele High Court in Nigeria’s Delta State sentenced a 34-year-old brick-layer, Justice Igbame, to death by hanging for killing his three-year-old daughter with a kitchen knife.
According to the prosecution, "on the 10th day of October, 2003, the accused person called his daughter who was playing outside into his one-room apartment at No. 17, Igbagba Road, Gana, Sapele and proceeded to slit her throat with a kitchen knife."
Igbame stated he had heard voices telling him to kill his daughter and that her mother had abandoned her with him for five days without returning home.
Delivering judgment, Justice Franklin Ohwo held that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and dismissed the defence of insanity put forward by the accused. The trial judge stated that the "the accused had failed to discharge the burden of proving that at the material time of the killing that he was insane," and held that "the evidence in support of the allegation of insanity was unreliable and that the accused was sane when he killed the daughter as evident from his confessional statement made to the police."
 

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