In what may shock many fair-minded persons, particularly those without training in legal jurisprudence, a High Court in Delta State, sentenced one Mr. Vincent Okwekwu, to death by hanging, for robbing a victim of a handset and N10,000.00. The court, which sat at Akwukwu-Igbo, found the accused guilty of three count charges, including conspiracy and robbery. So, in addition to the death sentence, the accused also bagged a 21-year jail term on each of the other two counts. In fairness to the judge, while the weight of the judgment may appear far heavier than the worth of the items stolen, the sentence falls within the extant provisions of our criminal law.
Yet the sociological impact for such grievous punishment, for what many would regard as a lowly robbery incident, should be a point of interest for legal jurisprudence. For us, and we guess for many others, we would have been more comfortable with a criminal law that would punish a robbery without a murder, with perhaps a long term of imprisonment. In saying this, we are not unappreciative of the psychological harm, a robbery with or without death does to a society. Our concern is how the law can mitigate the finality of death sentence, taking cognisance of the actual impact of the offence committed.
In prosecuting Okwekwu, the court was told that the accused, with other persons at-large, broke into the apartment of the victims, and robbed them of a handset and N10,000.00, armed with a cutlass and a gun. So, despite that the sentence appears very harsh, the legal ingredients needed to find an accused guilty of the crime of robbery were met. Still, many in the society would find the punishment and the actual crime committed somewhat irreconcilable. In seeking a solution to this psychological aberration for the society, experts in the jurisprudence of sentencing, should device an acceptable median.
What again may rankle many honest bystanders is the reality that well-heeled people who commit other kinds of crimes that, in their view, impact more on the society, get comparatively a slap on the wrist. Take, for instance, serious economic crimes and sabotage, with a high propensity to harm a greater number of members of the society. In some of such instances, which impact may cause multiple deaths, like petroleum products racketeering, the offender may walk free, while what may be referred to as petty robbery, gets a death penalty.
Another instance is the stealing of public funds like the pension fund, which no doubt results in multiple deaths, of senior members of the society. For many, it is a challenge to legal jurisprudence that a person who has stolen billions of naira of pensioners, gets a few years jail term, or even an option of fine; while a robber who steals items worth not more than N50,000, gets a death sentence. Regardless of the fine points of law, the disparity in punishment, represents the society as an uneven one.
Such disparity in the punishment for crimes, between that committed by a lowly person and that most likely committed by the high and mighty, may also be very traumatic for the society, just as the aberrance in the disparity between the crime and the punishment in question. In the peculiar Nigerian environment, there is also a challenge for legal jurisprudence with regards to the impact of poverty. This is particularly in circumstances where the lowly criminal, may have poor or no legal representation, while the well-heeled would use quality legal minds to place all manner of subterfuge before the court, to escape even the lesser punishment for more impactful crimes.
