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The Court of Appeal in the case of WISDOM KWORSHIE AKPEKPE v. THE REPUBLIC [TLP-CA-2026-27] has upheld a 30-year sentence imposed on a man convicted of armed robbery in 2008, holding that the absence of the full trial judgment from the record of appeal did not prevent it from determining the appeal, since the surviving record was adequate to answer the grounds raised. The court did, however, find one error on the face of the available record, that the sentence had unlawfully been backdated, and reduced it to 24 years to correct that single defect.
The decision, delivered by Justice Gifty Dekyem with a concurring opinion from Justice Mensah-Homiah, addressed how an appellate court should proceed when the very judgment under appeal cannot be found.
Background
Wisdom Kworshie Akpeke was tried alongside six others before the High Court on charges of conspiracy to rob and robbery, arising from an armed home invasion at Lashibi in the early hours of 5 May 2002, in which cash and valuables were taken at gunpoint from the complainant, Millicent Freeman. Akpeke and several co-accused were convicted on 11 July 2008 and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment with hard labour on each count, to run concurrently "from the day each of them was remanded in prison custody."
By the time leave to appeal was granted in December 2020, the full written judgment of the trial court could no longer be traced. All that remained in the record of appeal was the trial judge's brief court notes from 11 July 2008, recording that judgment had been read and the sentences pronounced, without any stated reasons.
Akpeke appealed solely against sentence, not conviction, arguing that 30 years was harsh and excessive, that his acceptance of guilt and decision to appeal only the sentence showed remorse, and that as a first-time offender who had reformed in prison he deserved a reduced term.
Effect of the Missing Judgment
The opinions of both Dekyem and Mensah-Homiah, JJA squarely confronted what should follow from the fact that the trial court's reasoning was unavailable.
Justice Dekyem noted that "no judgment was included in the ROA for this Court to ascertain the reasons forming the basis of the sentence imposed
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Rather than treating this gap as fatal to the appeal or as grounds to presume error, the court instead tested the sentence directly against the governing statutory framework. It found that robbery under section 149 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) was a first-degree felony carrying a maximum of life imprisonment under section 296(1) of the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) Act, 1960 (Act 30), and that a 30-year term therefore fell squarely within the range the law permitted, irrespective of what reasoning the trial judge might have given.
Justice Mensah-Homiah's concurrence engaged with the point more directly, drawing on the Supreme Court's guidance in John Bonuah alias Eric Annor Blay v. The Republic on incomplete records of appeal. She held that the law "does not demand a hundred percent perfect record of proceedings," but rather an "adequate" one, adequacy being assessed against the specific grounds of appeal raised, not against some abstract completeness standard. Because Akpeke's appeal was confined to sentence rather than conviction, and the surviving court notes disclosed the charges, the plea, the verdict, and the sentence imposed, the record was sufficient for the court to test the sentence's legality even without the judge's underlying reasoning. She was careful to add that the disappearance of the judgment "will not automatically inure to the advantage" of the appellant, silence in the record cuts both ways, and does not itself supply a presumption of unreasonableness.
Both judgments also rejected, on similar reasoning, the Respondent's suggestion that the absence of the judgment should instead count against Akpeke.
Justice Mensah-Homiah found that even assuming the trial court had failed to factor in Akpeke's youth at the time of the offence, the aggravating circumstances on the surviving record, the premeditated nature of the crime, his position of trust as a former employee of the complainant, his leadership role in the robbery, and his flight to Togo afterward, were overwhelming enough that any such omission occasioned no miscarriage of justice.
The One Error the Record Did Reveal
Although the missing judgment could not be used to fault the trial court's exercise of sentencing discretion, the surviving court notes contained an error visible on their own terms: the direction that the 30-year sentence should run "from the day each of them was remanded in prison custody." Both judgments held this offended section 315(3) of Act 30, which provides that a sentence of imprisonment commences on the day it is pronounced, and cited Ojo v. The Republic for the principle that a court "cannot impose a sentence today and say it should take effect from yesterday." The proper mechanism for accounting for pre-trial detention was Article 14(6) of the 1992 Constitution, which requires that time spent in lawful custody be deducted from, not appended after, the sentence.
Calculating that Akpeke had been held in custody from his arrest in 2002 until his conviction in 2008, a period of roughly six years, the court set aside the 30-year sentence and substituted a 24-year term to run from the date of conviction.
Grounds of Remorse and Reformation Rejected
The decision of the Court through the voice of Dekyem, JA who had the voiced concurrence of Mensah-Homiah, JA dismissed Akpeke's remaining grounds, that his post-conviction remorse and prison reformation warranted a reduced sentence, as matters extraneous to the appellate function. Citing the Supreme Court's disapproval of similar grounds in Joel Mejia Duarte Moises alias Joel Melia v. The Republic, Justice Mensah-Homiah held that reformation occurring after sentence is a matter for the Prisons Service's administrative remission process, not a ground on which an appellate court may revisit a sentence that was otherwise properly imposed.
Decision
The appeal against sentence was allowed only to the extent of correcting the unlawful backdating. The 30-year sentence was set aside and substituted with 24 years' imprisonment with hard labour, to run from the date of conviction, 11 July 2008, with the sentencing discretion itself, exercised in the absence of any known reasoning by the trial judge, left otherwise undisturbed.
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