Supreme Court clears major criminal trials to continue during legal vacation

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for selected criminal trials in Ghana to continue during the legal vacation after rejecting an application by Ofoase-Ayirebi MP Kojo Oppong Nkrumah to suspend the proceedings.

Justice Gabriel Pwamang, sitting as a single judge of the Supreme Court, dismissed the application on Friday, August 21, ruling that Mr Oppong Nkrumah had not established a proper case for an interlocutory injunction.

The decision means the affected courts can continue sitting under administrative warrants issued by Chief Justice

Paul Baffoe-Bonnie.

Among the cases affected are the trial of former National Signals Bureau Director-General Kwabena Adu-Boahene and his wife, and proceedings involving former NAFCO Chief Executive Officer Hanan Abdul-Wahab.

But Friday's decision does not settle the larger constitutional dispute at the heart of the case.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah has filed a substantive case challenging the constitutionality of the Chief Justice's decision

to direct selected High Court judges to continue hearing criminal cases during the legal vacation.

The legal vacation runs from 1 August to 30 September.

The MP argues that the directive violates provisions of Ghana's 1992 Constitution, including Articles 17 and 296, and amounts to selective justice.

He subsequently asked the Supreme Court to suspend the warrants through an interlocutory injunction until the substantive constitutional case could be determined.

That application has now been rejected, allowing the selected criminal proceedings to continue while the main constitutional challenge remains before the court.

Following Friday's ruling, Mr Oppong Nkrumah's lawyer, Frank Davies, said the legal team accepted the decision and would await the court's full written reasoning before advising their client on the next steps.

“It is not in our place as lawyers to condemn the judge. We can only critique,” Mr Davies said.

He said the lawyers had applied for a certified true copy of the ruling and would study it before deciding how to proceed.

“We shall apply for when the ruling is handed to us, we shall read in detail the written ruling and appropriately advise our client,” he said.

Mr Davies also stressed that the legal team would abide by the ruling for the time being.

The case therefore leaves two separate questions before the Supreme Court.

The first whether the selected criminal trials should be suspended while the constitutional case is pending has been answered by Friday's dismissal of the injunction application.

The second, and potentially more significant question, is whether the Chief Justice's administrative warrants directing selected judges to sit during the legal vacation are themselves constitutionally valid.

That substantive question remains outstanding and will have to be determined by the Supreme Court.