Maryam Sanda has filed an appeal against the Abuja Federal High Court order which sentenced her to death by hanging for the murder of her husband, Bilyaminu Bello.
Sanda in her appeal against the high court judgment said the trial judge exhibited bias against her and assumed the duty of an Investigating Police Officer (IPO).
It will be recalled that Sanda was found guilty of a two-count charge of culpable homicide by Justice Yusuf Halilu of the Abuja high court on Monday, 27th January 2020 and was sentenced to death by hanging.
She has however appealed the court judgment against her on grounds that she wasn’t given a fair hearing.
She added that the judge failed to rule on her preliminary objection, noting that there was no evidence of witnesses, lack of confessional statement, absence of murder weapon, lack of corroboration of evidence by two or more witnesses and lack of autopsy report to determine the true cause of her husband’s death.
She said in her application; “The honourable trial judge erred in law when having taken arguments on the appellant’s preliminary objection to the validity of the charge on the 19th of March, 2018 failed to rule on it at the conclusion of the trial or at any other time.
“The trial judge exhibited bias against the defendant in not ruling one way or the other on the said motion challenging his jurisdiction to entertain the charge and therefore fundamentally breached the right to a fair hearing of the defendant.”
“The circumstantial evidence which the trial court relied upon in its application of the last seen doctrine does not lead to the conclusion that the defendant is responsible for the death of the deceased.”
No date has been fixed for hearing in the matter.
