Court Expunges Portions of Testimony in Bissue Graft Trial
The High Court in Accra has excised twenty-four paragraphs from the witness statement of an investigative journalist testifying in the alleged corruption trial of Charles Bissue, erstwhile Secretary to the now-defunct Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, and two co-defendants, deeming the material inadmissible hearsay.
According to the presiding judge, the stricken portions of the deposition failed to satisfy the evidentiary threshold of direct knowledge and instead relied on second-hand assertions incapable of cross-examination, thereby compromising the sacrosanct tenets of fair trial jurisprudence. The bench underscored that judicial proceedings must be anchored on probative evidence rather than unattributed narratives, ordering the excision to preserve the integrity of the adjudicative process.
According to counsel for Charles Bissue, the ruling vindicates the defence’s long-held contention that the prosecution’s case has been substantially erected on conjectural reportage rather than forensic particularity. The legal team maintained that the deletion significantly narrows the evidentiary substratum upon which the State seeks to establish culpability in relation to alleged improprieties at the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining.
The prosecution, led by the Office of the Special Prosecutor, had tendered the journalist’s statement as pivotal to establishing a pattern of transactional malfeasance and abuse of office within the anti-galamsey architecture. According to the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the remaining paragraphs still constitute a formidable compendium of direct observations and documented encounters, and the State remains resolute in prosecuting the matter to its logical conclusion.
The trial emanates from an investigative exposé that implicated high-ranking officials in the circumvention of mining regulations and the solicitation of illicit inducements to facilitate unauthorized operations. According to legal analyst Professor Clara Kasser-Tee, the court’s interlocutory decision reaffirms the judiciary’s gatekeeping role in filtering evidentiary quality and could recalibrate prosecutorial strategy in complex corruption litigation.
Source: #JudiciaryGhana
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Author: Stella Sunu
