Monrovia – Shocked by news of jury tampering, many party litigants who were present at the Civil Law Court “B” at the Temple of Justice Thursday afternoon stood speechless when nine jurors, suspected of receiving bribes were ordered arrested and detained at the Monrovia Central Prison.
Report by: Kennedy L. Yangian – [email protected]
“These hungry people just want to come to this court and spoil people cases for the sake of money, this is very unfortunate for the Judiciary,” said one of the party litigants.
This is not the first instance at the Temple of Justice for jurors to be either detained or disbanded for their alleged role in taking bribes.
The latest incident of alleged jury tampering was in May 2016 when the then Presiding Judge of the Criminal Court “C” at the Temple of Justice, Blamo Dixon, disbanded three of the empanelled jurors during hearing in the stalled US$800,000 economic sabotage case against the former Managing Director of the National Port Authority (NPA), Matilda Parker, and Comptroller Christina Paelay for alleged tampering.
According to court sources, in the current case the jurors’ arrest stemmed from the Wednesday July 6 verdict rendered in favor of the Ecobank in a case for damages in the tune of US$1.3m filed against the bank by Austin Clarke.
Explaining his ordeal following the jurors’ arrest, Austin Clarke told reporters that he took a loan from the Ecobank in May 2013 in the amount of US$117,000 and provided a house as collateral. He said he was paying the loan gradually but in 2014, the bank alleged that he went in hiding for nine years, which he said was false.
Clarke stated that he was arrested on orders of the bank and was not allowed to a bond neither to have access to his lawyer and detained at the Monrovia Central Prison for four days without release.
He said after his release, he filed a lawsuit to the Civil Law Court for damages in the amount of US$1.3m for wrong but lawyers representing the bank asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit and the motion was denied and the case was ruled to trial.
According to Clarke, when the case was assigned before the presiding Judge, Johannes Zlahn, the bank claimed that he owed but never presented any record, rather he presented all receipts of payments on the loan to the court before the jurors.
“In the new trial, I presented all my evidence, mortgage and documents and was declared as the best customer of Ecobank but Ecobank produced nothing,” said Clarke.
He said when the jurors went for deliberation, they brought out a verdict that the bank was not liable, which annoyed everyone who followed the case from the beginning to the end.
Clarke indicated that after the verdict, a source informed him that there was a quarrel between six of the jurors and the other three when six jurors decided to give three jurors US$ 50 each from the US$6,000 bribe they allegedly received to render the verdict in favor of Ecobank.
“I came to the court to get justice for the wrong done to me but justice has been put on sale by the jurors, which is very unfortunate,” Clarke lamented.
A source at the court said the nine jurors will remain at the prison and report to the court on a daily basis for investigation until the facts surrounding the bribery allegation levied against them are ascertained.
The presiding Judge of the Civil Law Court “B”, Zlahn, when contacted by FrontPage Africa Thursday afternoon to comment on the nine jurors’ detention, refused to comment, adding judges don’t hold press conference.
“Mr. Pressman, judges don’t hold press conference. If you want to know what happened here, come to the court on a daily basis during the course of the investigation,” said Judge Zlahn who refused to speak further.