SC. MISC. APP. 1/2001

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF SIERRA LEONE

IN THE MATTER OF THE CONSTITUTION OF SIERRA LEONE 1991 AND

In the matter of an application under section 125 of the Constitution of Sierra Leone Act No.6 of 1991 and under the Common law for leave to apply for an Order of Prohibition and for directions and consequential

Orders.

AND

In the matter of the English Supreme Court Rules

AND

In the matter of the Anti-Corruption Act 2000

AND IN THE MATTER BETWEEN:-

EX-PARTE MUCTARU OLA TAJU-DEEN                           - Applicant

AND

The COMMISSIONER of the Anti-Corruption Commission      -  1st Respondent

AND

THE STATE represented by THE LEARNED

ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE      -  2nd Respondent

AND

THE HON. MRS. JUSTICE PATRICIA MACAULEY           - 3rd Respondent

Coram:

Hon. Mr. Justice D.E.F. Luke                              -   CJ.

Hon. Mr. Justice A.B. Timbo                              -   J.S.C.

Hon. Mrs, Justice A.V.D. Wright                        -  J.S.C.

Hon. Mr. Justice H.M. Joko Smart                     -   J.S.C

Hon. Mr. Justice S.C.E. Warae                           -  J.S.C.

C. Doe-Smith, Esq. and T.M. Terry, Esq. for Applicant

S.E. Berewa, Esq. Attorney-General,

B.S. Kebbie, Esq., D.P.P, L.M. Farmah, Esq.,

Senior State Counsel & M. Sesay, Esq., Counsel for Respondents

Judgment date the 23 day of February 2001.

JOKO SMART, JSC: This application is a link in a chain of Motions before this court by the same applicant seeking, among other things, an order the effect of which is to put an end to his current trial in the High Court before the Hon. Mrs. Justice Patricia Macauley. Following the ruling of this Court on 18

January 2001 whereby an Order nisi previously granted to the applicant to pursue certiorari proceedings was discharged, the applicant appears to have abandoned that course of action and has opted to proceed with Prohibition and a Motion for various Declarations. The present application is the one dealing with Prohibition. We decided to defer a hearing of the Motion for Declarations to a later stage.

The applicant is not happy with Mrs. Justice Patricia Macauley presiding over his trial in a criminal matter in the High Court because, in his view, there is a likelihood of her being biased. The trial is by judge alone. This apart, the applicant wants to be rid of the whole indictment against him because he alleges that there were certain defects in the preliminary proceedings leading to a Report of the Anti-Corruption Commission, a body established under the Anti-Corruption act, Act No.1 of 2000, which report the Attorney-General formed the basis of the indictment. I will give details of these defects later on in this ruling.

We decided to make the application for leave inter parties and invited written arguments on the two issues from both the Applicant and the Respondents. Having perused the written arguments we granted the leave and we limited the oral arguments to the question of bias only as we were satisfied that the written arguments were sufficient to make us reach a decision on the second leg of the application.

Prohibition, like the other prerogative orders of certiorari and mandamus, lies when there is a defect in the process by which a decision of a subordinate court is reached; it is not concerned with the merits of the decision itself. Speaking on judicial review generally, of which prohibition is a part, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone underscores the point in North Wales Police v Evans [19821 3 ALL ER 141.143:

"The purpose of judicial review is to ensure that the individual receives fair treatment and not to ensure that the authority, after according treatment, reaches on a matter which it is authorised or enjoined by law to decide for itself, a conclusion which is correct in the eyes of the court".

Prohibition can therefore lie where there is a complaint of bias against a judge trying a matter. This is jurisdictional as bias goes to the root of the judicial process. But if the grievance is about a defect in a system before a matter went before the judge there are other considerations to be taken into account. I shall elaborate on this when I come to the second leg of the application.

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Bias

The applicant's allegation of bias by the Hon. Mrs. Justice Patricia Macauley is founded on two incidents: one allegedly took place in the Chambers of the applicant himself at the time when he was a judge sitting on a criminal trial, i.e., The State vs. Hon. Dr. Harry Will and Others, and the other in the Chambers of Mrs. Justice Macauley. In respect of the first, the applicant complains that Mrs. Justice Macauley made certain remarks to him as reported in his exhibit MOTD 19 attached to his affidavit sworn the 11th January 2001 and filed in support of this application. The remarks were that there were rumours in Freetown that the applicant would not find the accused persons he was trying guilty. The applicant now claims that these remarks may very well haunt Mrs. Macauley now trying him since there is a nexus with the indictment on which he is standing trial. The nexus is that the substratum of the indictment relates to his dealings with one of the accused persons, Bockari Kakay, who was the only accused that was eventually found not guilty by the judge. There is no suggestion that at the time that the alleged remarks were made there was any inkling that the applicant might one day be charged with offences having a nexus with that trial. Indeed, Mr. Terry, Counsel for the applicant forcefully put before us that only a clairvoyant, and Mrs. Macauley is not one such person, would have at the time that the remarks were made, known that the applicant would be in his present predicament. Mr. Terry therefore lays more emphasis on likelihood of bias rather that on naked bias. In his supplemental affidavit sworn to the 12 February 2001 in opposition to the application, Lahai Momoh Farmah deposed that Mrs. Justice Macauley denied making the ramarks complained of. I will not go into the merits of this denial as I regard it as hearsay.

The other incident, as I have mentioned earlier, happened in the chambers of Mrs. Macualey. The applicant complains that the judge ordered her Registrar to remove from her file in the criminal case against the applicant an affidavit dated 21 November 2000 sworn to by the applicant. This complaint is supported by an affidavit sworn to the 11th January 2001 by Michael Turay, a clerk in the office of Mr. Terry, who deposed that he presented the said affidavit to Felix Koroma, the Registrar attached to the court of Mrs. Macauley. The applicant's said affidavit was not exhibited in the affidavit of Michael Turay. Turay's affidavit repeated verbatim his affidavit sworn to the 7th day of December 2000 in support of a Notice of Motion of the same day. There is no denial by the respondents that a document was removed from the file at the instance of the judge but there is a contention with regard to the nature of the document. Felix Koroma, the registrar, deposed in his affidavit of the 30th January 2001 that the document which he received from Michael Turay was a Notice of Motion in the High Court captioned: MISCAPP.228/2000 D.Nol2: BETWEEN: THE STATE - Respondent AND HON. MR. JUSTICE M.O TAJU-DEEN - Applicant.

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The said Notice of Motion, Koroma says, is exhibit "A" of the affidavit of Lahai Momoh Farmah sworn to on 30 January 2001 in opposition to this application. That Notice of Motion is supported by an affidavit sworn to by the applicant herein and it contains two exhibits. One is a letter written by the applicant to the Chief Justice which contains the alleged remarks by Mrs. Macauley (exhibit MOTD1). This affidavit is the same as exhibit MOTD19 of the affidavit of the applicant in support of his present application before us. The other exhibit (MOTD2) is the affidavit of Michael Turay dated the 7th December 2000 which is also the same as his affidavit of the 11th January 2001. I must say that there has been total prolixity in the filing of affidavits many of which are repetitive but this cannot be allowed to obfuscate an issue which appears to me to be very simple.

I consider it unnecessary, in reaching a conclusion as to a likelihood of bias, to determine which document was actually delivered to the clerk of Mrs. Justice Macauley and which she ordered to be expunged from her court records and be returned to the source from which it came. What I consider to be relevant is whether or not the disputed document regularly found its place in the file of the judge. If the answer is in the negative then the question of bias cannot arise. I will describe the regular process by which documents filed in the office of the Master & Registrar find their places in judges' files. I knew it during my 32 years practice at the bar and I have no reason to believe that it has changed. In the case of an affidavit relating to a matter before a judge, the original and a copy are put in the judge's file by the filing officer in the office of the Master and Registrar and the file is collected by the Registrar attached to the judge or is taken to him or her by another officer in the filing office. For all other documents requiring a fresh allocation to a judge like a Miscellaneous Application, a separate file is opened and the application is placed there. Then the file is sent by the Master and Registrar to the Chief Justice or the Justice of Supreme Court responsible for the allocation of cases for assignment to a judge. It is after the assignment that the case file containing the original document together with a copy finds itself in the chambers of the judge taken there by the Registrar attached to the judge or some officer of the filing office. In neither case is it regular for a solicitor's clerk to take the original and copy document intended for the judge's file to the chambers of the judge and request the Registrar to place them in the judge's file. This being the case, I opine that Mrs. Justice Macauley rightly ordered the document whatever it was to be removed from her file and returned. The question about her motive in doing so becomes to me irrelevant. I therefore find that bias cannot be imputed to her in the circumstances.

The only incident left to consider for the allegation of bias is the first I will do so by beginning with the law on bias.

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The law on bias.

Speaking on bias, Lord Cranworth, L.C. had this to say in Ranger v. Great Western R.v. Co. 5 H.L. 72. 98:

"A judge ought to be, and is supposed to be, indifferent between the parties. He has, or is supposed to have, no bias inducing him to lean to the one side rather than to the other. In ordinary cases it is a just ground of exception to a judge that he is not indifferent, and the fact that he is himself a party, or interested as a party, affords the strongest proof that he cannot be indifferent."

But in Franklin v. Minister of Town and Country Planning H9491 A.C. 87. 103, Lord Thankerton gives a much limited connotation to the word bias. He says:

"The use of the word bias should be confined to its proper sphere; its proper significance, in my opinion, is to denote a departure from the standard of even-handed justice which the law requires from those who occupy judicial office, or those who are commonly regarded as holding a quasi-judicial office as an arbitrator. The reason for this clearly is that, having to adjudicate as between two or more parties, he must come to his adjudication with an independent mind, without any inclination or bias towards one side or other in the dispute."

Bias is presumed if a judge has an interest, pecuniary or otherwise and he is automatically disqualified from sitting in judgment over a case concerning that interest. This is in line with the principle that a man shall not be a judge in his own cause expressed by the Latin maxim nemo judex in sua causa. This has been established as far back as 1852. Thus in Dimes v. Proprietors of Grand Junction Canal (1852) 3 HL Cas. 759.10 ER 301. Lord Cottenham, the then Lord Chancellor, owned substantial shares in the defendant company. In an action against the company, Lord Cottenham sat on appeal from a judgment in favour of the company, which he affirmed. On an appeal to the House of Lords, it was held that Lord Cottenham was disqualified form sitting as a judge in the case because of the financial interest which he had in the suit. A very significant modern example is that of Lord Hoffmann in the case of R.v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate & Ors, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No.2) [1999] 1 ALL ER 577 in which the House of Lord set aside its own previous judgment, in f 19981 4 ALL ER 897 because Lord Hoffmann sat on the case when he was at that time a director and chairperson of Amnesty International Charity Limited, a subsidiary of Amnesty International that was a party in the action.

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In Pinochet's case, like the instant case before us, no allegation of actual bias was made and established against Lord Hoffmann. What was in issue is the likelihood of bias. This case was preceded by a stream of cases beginning with R.v Rand (1866) LR 1 OB 230 in which Blackhurn J. expressed the view that a real likelihood of bias must be proved to exist before proceedings will be vitiated on the ground that a person who has taken part or assisted in adjudicating then was incapacitated by interest from doing so. In R. (De Vesci) v. Queen's County JJ. F19081 2IR.271 Lord O'Brien took a further step to explain the contents of "bias". He said: "by bias I understand a real likelihood of an operative prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious. There must, in my opinion, be real evidence to satisfy (the court) that there was a real likelihood of bias". Two years later, in R. (Donoghue) b. County Cork JJ [ 1910] 2 IR 271. 275 Lord O' Brien elaborated on bias as follows: I do not think that the mere vague suspicion of whimsical, capricious, and unreasonable people should be made a standard to regulate our action here. It might be different if suspicion rested on reasonable grounds, but certainly merely flimsy, elusive, morbid suspicion should not be permitted to form a ground of decision"

In R.v. Nailsworth Licensing Justices, ex parte Bird [19531 2 Q.B.D 652. the court did not mention these last three cases but Goddard CJ. at page 654 expressed the view on bias as follows:-

"It is not something which raises doubt in somebody's mind that is enough to cause an order or a judgement to be set aside. There must be something in the nature of real bias. The fact that a person has a proprietary or a pecuniary interest in the subject-matter before the court which he does not disclose, has always been held to be enough to upset the decision of the court, but merely that a justice, may be thought to have formed some opinion beforehand is not, in my opinion, enough to do so".

In this case, one of three justices on a licensing committee hearing of an application for off-licence had previously been a signatory of a petition by members of the local community in favour of the licence. She signed the petition some weeks before the date of the hearing when she was shopping at a store known as Price's Stores. She was not originally scheduled to be on the committee hearing the application but on the day before the application was to be heard she was requested to take the place on the bench of other justices who were unable to attend the court the next day. She was not informed that any licensing application was due to be heard and she was not given details of the court's list for that day. She could not remember signing the petition and so she did not inform the other two justices that she had signed it. At the hearing of the application the petition was tendered in support of the application. It was objected to by those who opposed the application. The objection was overruled

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and the petition was tendered in evidence. It was not read out in court nor was it handed to the justices for their inspection. While the justices were in retirement to consider the decision, it was observed that one of them had previously signed the petition. The justices returned into the court and announced that they have granted the licence. It was at this juncture that objection was raised that one of the justices had signed the petition but the justices declined to alter their decision. On a motion to the Queen's Bench Division for an order of certiorari to quash the justices' order on the ground of bias, it was held that although it was undesirable that a justice who had signed a petition should sit and adjudicated on the subject-matter of the petition, to justify setting aside that decision there must be something in the nature of real bias; merely that a justice might be thought to have formed some opinion on the subject-matter which she is called upon to decide was not a ground on which the decision could be set aside. Because both the applicant and the respondents have relied heavily on this case I will come back to it.

R.v. Camborne Justices: Ex parte Pearce [1954] 2 ALL ER 850 is another case worth mentioning. In this case Slade J. sitting in the Queen's Bench Division with two other judges, Lord Goddard C.J. and Cassels J., in a unanimous judgement of the court, applied the dictum of Blackburn J. in R.v. Rand (ante), adopted the views of Lord O'Brien (ante), and subscribed the following dicta which I find very illuminating for a decision of the case before us. "This court is of opinion that a real likelihood of bias must be made to appear not only from the materials in fact ascertained by the part complaining, but from such further fact as he might readily have ascertained and easily verified in the course of his enquiries." (at page 855). Slade J concludes his judgement with a caution on the indiscriminate application of the famous aphorism of Lord Hewart that it is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done:

"The frequency with which allegations of bias have come before courts in recent times seems to indicate that the reminder of Lord Hewart, CJ., R.v Sussex JJ. Ex p. McCarthy [19241 1 K.B. 259 is being urged as a warrant for quashing convictions or invalidation of orders on quite unsubstantial grounds and, indeed, in some cases on the flimsiest pretexts of bias. While indorsing and fully maintaining the integrity of the principle reasserted by Lord Hewart CJ. is not applicable may lead to the erroneous impression that it is more important that justice should appear to be done than that it should in fact be done." (at page 855).

This is as far as I consider it necessary to delve into English case law on bias for the purpose of the instant case. Apart from two reported cases, (See Foulah v. Kolifa Rowala Tribal Authority 1950-56 ALR S.L. 142; Hon. T.S.

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Brewa v. Tuberville & Ors. SLLR 1960 - 61.111) in which dicta were expressed by Luke, Ag. J. and Bankole Jones J respectively on the possible application of the nemo judex in sua causa principle to Local Court members who are customary court judges if the evidence warranted it, but there was no such evidence to warrant applying it, local judicial precedent involving superior court judges is lacking on bias. This is therefore one appropriate area in which I can legitimately borrow a leaf from English common law bearing in mind that that law is our residuary law pursuant to section 170 of the 1991 Constitution. I will therefore adopt the various dicta expressed in those cases as I find them apposite to the case before us.

The oral presentation

With their written presentation as their com of vantage and the time limitation we imposed on them, counsel on both sides merely highlighted their positions of strength. I will therefore summarise here their arguments. With regard to the first incident, for the applicant, Mr. Terry did not go beyond his written exposition save that he assisted this court with his statement that Mrs. Justice Macauley might not even have remembered while sitting on his client's case that she made those remarks and that was one of the reasons that he deemed it necessary to file the affidavit which gave rise to the second incident in order to jug her memory that she did make those remarks. No further evidence is adduced to substantiate the allegation of likelihood of bias. So far as the other incident is concerned, Mr. Terry stressed that the removal of the affidavit from the file on the instruction of the judge is what constitutes bias on her part when taken in combination with the first incident. It must be noted that Mr. Terry never intended to use the affidavit at the trial. Mr Berewa for the respondents contended that the document that was removed was Miscellaneous Application 228/2000. I have already ruled that the nature of the document is irrelevant for the present purpose.

Both parties have relied heavily on the cases of R.v. Nailsworth Licensing Justices, ex parte Bird [1953] 2 ALL ER 652 and R.v. Camborne Justices ex parte Pearce [1954] 2 ALL ER 850. But Mr. Terry distinguishes the Bird case from the instant case in that while no objection was raised to Alice Waine sitting on the licensing committee even though the solicitors for the objectors knew at that time that she had signed the petition and only raised their objection after a decision had been reached, in the instant case, his client had objected to the judge trying him right from the beginning of the trial and before verdict. I disagree with Mr.. Terry that the decision in the Bird case would have been different even if the objection to Alice Waine had been taken before the committee pronounced its decision. A careful perusal of that case warrants my conclusion. In dismissing the application, this was what Goddard CJ. said:-

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"Having carefully considered the affidavits, we refuse the order on two grounds - (i) because we do not think it was established that there was any real bias on the part of this justice or that there was anything done which would make it appear improper, and not merely undesirable, for her to sit (and we have no reason to suppose that she would have signed this petition if she had known she was going to sit):, (ii) because we think there was ample opportunity for any objection to have been made before the was given."

As can clearly be seen, the two grounds are independent. It is the first ground that is of great importance in this application.

Before reaching a conclusion on bias let me go back to the case of Franklin v. Minister of Town and Country Planning [19491 A.C. 87. the facts of which will throw more insight on my judgment. Parliament had given the minister of Town and Country Planning power to establish new towns. Pursuant to that power, the Minister made an Order designating Stevenage as a new town. The order was challenged by Franklin and others who had objected to the creation of the new town one of the grounds being that the Minister was biased when he made the Order. The facts in support of the allegation of bias are that, before the Act of Parliament pursuant to which the Order was made, the Minister had made a statement in speeches that the designation of Stevenages as a new town would be carried through. Further facts however disclosed that when the New Towns Act was passed, the Minister, before making the Order, caused the draft of the Order to be published and notices to be sent out inviting objections. When the objections were received he set up an independent public local inquiry and a report of the enquiry submitted. He acted on the strength of the report on the enquiry itself. The Court held that a likelihood of bias in the making of the order could not be inferred from the previous statements made by the Minister. It was then that Lord Thankerton made the statements with which I started the law on bias in this ruling.

From all the arguments presented to this Court, I apprehend that further facts have not been given by the applicant in order to support the allegation of a likelihood of bias on the part of Mrs. Justice Macauley. I have already concluded that the judge was right in ordering the removal of the disputed document from her file. Without this second incident, the allegation in the first incident is paralysed. Rumour mongering has become a past-time activity in our society today. Many of them are innocently conveyed only to whet the appetite. When there is an unsavoury rumour about a person it takes only a friend or a faithful colleague to acquaint him with it. Others spread the rumour to create more excitement than an earthquake. Counsel for the applicant made the case much simpler for us when he conceded that but for his attempt to jug the memory of the judge she would not even have remembered making the

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remarks. Bias is concerned with what operates in the mind of the person accused of it. Based on the authorities which I have considered in this ruling and on my own judgment, I do not think that the alleged remarks alone, in the circumstances, create a likelihood of bias. I will therefore dismiss this leg of the application.

The trouble with the Anti-Corruption Commission

In this application as it was with the application for certiorari, the Anti-Corruption Commission is again under fire. In a nutshell, the complaint is that (i) the Commission was not properly constituted according to law in that the deputy Commissioner had not been appointed up to the time that the applicant was charged with a 12 count Indictment on which he is standing trial: (ii) there is a breach of the principles of natural justice in that he did not appear before the Commission before findings were made against him and a report sent to the Attorney-General upon which the Indictment was preferred: (iii) there is a violation of some mandatory provisions of the Anti-Corruption Act under which the findings were made.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this ruling, having allowed ourselves the luxury of reading through the notice of Motion and the written arguments by counsel on both sides, we decided that we can give a ruling on this issue without listening to any further oral arguments.

The law is replete with authorities on the non-availability of the orders of prohibition, certiorari or mandamus when there are other remedies open to the applicant. Sir John Donaldson M.R. in R. v Epping and Harlow General Commissioners, ex parte Goldstraw [19831 3 ALL ER 257, 262 made the following observation on the point.:

"It is a cardinal principle that, save in the most exceptional circumstances that (the judicial review) jurisdiction will not be exercised where other remedies were available and have not been used."

In another case, R. v. Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, exp. Calveley Ors. [1986] 1 ALL ER 257 at 260 Donaldson M.R. in clarification of his previous statement said:

"(It) does not support the proposition that judicial review is not available when there is an alternative remedy by way of appeal. It asserts simply that the court, in the exercise of its discretion will very rarely make this remedy available in these circumstance."

In the same case, May L.J. subscribed to the view when he said:

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"I think that one must guard against granting judicial review in cases where there is an alternative appeal route merely because it may be more effective and convenient to do so." (at page 265).

In Preston v. IRC [1985] 2 ALL ER 327. two law lords made similar pronouncements on judicial review. Lord Scarman said.

"A remedy by way of judicial review is not to be made available where an alternative remedy exists. This is a proposition of great importance. Judicial review is a collateral challenge; it is not an appeal." (at page 330)

Lord Templeman followed suit when he said:

"Judicial review should not be granted when an alternative remedy is available" (at page 337).

Of course, the authorities do not completely shut the door against the prerogative orders when there is an alternative remedy to pursue. Even in the presence of an alternative remedy, the court has a discretion to prefer judicial review but only in exceptional cases. One exception is when on the face of a decision it is clearly made without jurisdiction or in consequence of an error of law. See speech of Lord Widgery CJ. in R.V. Hillington London Borough, ex parte Rovce Homes Ltd. [1974] 2 ALL ER 643, 649. A second exception is when the process is in breach of natural justice. See the dictum of Lord Hailsham, L.C. in R.v. Chief Constable of the North South Police v. Evans (ante). However, two other law Lords have given a signal warning on this exception. Lord Evershed in Ridge v. Baldwin [19631 2 ALL EAR 66, 91 has pointed out the "danger of usurpation of power on the part of the courts under the pretext of having regard to the principles of natural justice". The warning is taken up by Lord Brightman in Chief Constable of the North Wales Police v. Evans [1982] 3 ALL ER 141,154: "Judicial review is not concerned with the decision but with the decision-making process. Unless that restriction on the power of the court is observed, that court will, in my view, under the guise of preventing the abuse of power, be itself guilty of usurpation of power."

After this brief excursion into English law let me now return home in the bid to lay the matter to rest. In Regina v. Commissioner of Police, ex parte Macaulay 1968 -69 ALR SX. 8 , Cole Ag. CJ. sitting in the High Court on an application for certiorari where the complaint was that there was a defect in the committal proceedings before a trial in the high court, ruled that the remedy was not obtainable and that the proper step which the applicant should have taken was to bring the defect to the trial court. I think that this is a sound and correct exposition of the law. Defects in all matters concerned with

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preliminary proceedings before a case goes on trial should first be brought to the attention of the trial court and if the complainant is dissatisfied with the decision of that court his remedy is to appeal and not to by-pass that process and resort to a superior court for a review.

In the instant case, there is no evidence before this court that the allegations against the Anti-Corruption Commission were brought to the attention of the trial judge in the criminal case for a ruling. If this had been done, the appropriate remedy would have been an appeal against an adverse ruling. In the present circumstances, there cannot be a straight application to the Supreme Court under section 125 of the Constitution for the court to exercise its supervisory jurisdiction having regard to what had previously transpired in the court of Massally J., which was not the court trying the applicant, as evidenced by exhibit MOTD 10 in the applicant's affidavit in support of this Motion. The Affidavit is the judgment of Massally J. that the Anti-Corruption Commission is neither a court nor an adjudicating body against which the High Court can exercise supervisory powers under section 134 of the Constitution. The question now is. Can the applicant leave that decision on the record not having appealed against it and apply to this Court under section 125 of the Constitution to re-open the same question that has been decided upon by the High Court? The answer is no. The trouble with the Anti-Corruption Commission can only be resolved by this Court when the Court is able to rule that that body is a court or an adjudicating body but this Court cannot do so in the prevailing circumstances.

Conclusion

In the light of all what I have said, the application is dismissed.

H.M. Joko Smart JSC I agree Hon. Mr. Justice D.E.F. Luke CJ

 I agree Hon. Hon Justice a r Timbo JSC

I agree Hon. Mrs Justice V.A.D Wright JSC

I agree Hon. Mr. Justice S.C.E. Warne JSC

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