THE BEST JUDGES ON EARTH

By Barrister Ayah Paul Abine*

Few right-thinking people would cease to wonder which law Camerounese judges are applying. Their penal code has provided for three kinds of sentences: fine, imprisonment and death. Imprisonment is either IN TERMS or FOR LIFE.

Even the infant knows that there is only one life until the Resurrection Day. When the Camerounese judge sentences the convict to life in prison, plus a prison term (of, say, 5 years) upon the convict’s failure to pay the fine after that convict has died, is it that, on the Resurrection Day, the judge shall order Christ to enforce the additional prison term; or that the judge in question shall replace the Christ?

If it is true that the Special Criminal Court has just sentenced a convict to 104 years in prison; which penal code is he applying, given that, by their penal code in force, the highest prison term is 25 (twenty-five) years; and that the general rule is that the judge must order CONCURRENT sentence?

[In the interest of our lay readers, CONCURRENT sentence means that, if a judge passes several sentences on the sane convict at the same time, the judge would order that the convict should serve only the highest of the several sentences.]

Now, the penal code provides that, when a person is found guilty of embezzling public funds of from 500.000 francs, the sentence shall (must) be imprisonment for life. Which law permits the Special Criminal Court to sentence anyone to 104 years for the embezzlement of public funds? And, in any case, what is the difference between life jail allowable by the law, and the unlawful 104 years for a convict already above 50, in a country where life expectancy is far below 50? Is not this a glaring case of CHERCHER LA PETITE BETE?

CLEARLY, Common Law and Civil Law NEVER can be bedfellows!!!

MORE THAN JUST CURIOUS!

ECCENTRIC!

September 7, 2019

* Ayah Paul Abine,is a former Supreme Court Judge  and Prosecutor, and l now Defence Counsel