Justice Rahman Oshodi of a Lagos Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, Ikeja, has discharged and acquitted a man, Adeyemi Adejumo, who was alleged to have defiled a two-year-old in a church.

Oshodi held that the prosecution failed to prove the charge of defilement against the defendant.
The state government had alleged that in 2019, at Ajose Lane, off Ikeolu Street, in the Idi-Oro area of Mushin, Lagos, the defendant lured the survivor, removed her pants, and defiled her.

The defendant refuted the allegation, accusing the survivor’s mother of faking the story because of a prior disagreement. He maintained that elders of the church had intervened over the disagreement and called for a ceasefire.

The judge said: “I maintain that the prosecutor’s mother was a vital witness but her failure to testify culminated in the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence narrative. To ground a conviction, circumstantial evidence must be compelling, complete and unequivocal.

“The medical doctor (prosecution witness one) did not identify the perpetrator and did not say that the forceful blunt penetration to the prosecutor’s vagina was by the penis of the defendant. The doctor admitted that no semen attributable to the defendant was harvested.”
Oshodi further said the investigating police officer, who was the second prosecution witness, revealed that the defendant denied the allegations.

“The fact that he ran away from the police station is insufficient proof that he committed the crime. Therefore, the circumstantial evidence the prosecution relied on is not compelling; it is not complete and it is not unequivocal.”

The judge cited Sections 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution, stating that every person charged with a criminal offence should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

He said the presumption squarely placed the burden of proof on the prosecution, which must be beyond reasonable doubts.

According to him, “in this case, the prosecution could not prove the defilement charge beyond reasonable doubts and it is better for nine guilty persons to go free than one innocent person to be wrongly convicted.

“Thus, while the guilty may escape today, he might not escape tomorrow and the society has a chance in the future to settle scores with him. But when an innocent person suffers from a mistake in the execution of criminal justice, there is no real chance of reversing what has been done.

“I must, therefore, resolve the issue for determination in favour of the defendant and against the prosecution. I find the defendant not guilty and I acquit and discharge him.”