Monrovia – Liberia’s Solicitor General-designate, Cllr. Daku Mulbah, has pledged support for a law that calls for judges to conduct pre-sentence hearing for guilty convicts.
Report by Kennedy L. Yangian, [email protected]
The pre-sentencing law was amended under Section 50 and 51 of the Penal Law of Liberia.
Cllr. Mulbah’s support for pre-sentence hearing comes after a two-day quarterly training for judges on sentencing guildlines and procedures organized by the Judiciary through the James A.A. Pierre Judicial Training Institute.
Over 100 judges, prosecutors and public defense lawyers of courts across Montserrado County attended the training as speakers called on judges to exercise the law in line with the amendment.
Serving as one of the facilitators on Tuesday, 20 Cllr. Mulbah, who is also the County Attorney of Montserrado, said pre-sentence hearing is law but the court has been very silent on it – an action that prompted the Supreme Court to organize the conference to have the judges’ attention drawn to it.
“Pre-sentence hearing is very important, I believe if we had conducted pre-sentence hearing in the past many persons could have lesser sentence and some other persons won’t have been in jail at this time,” said Cllr. Mulbah, who said sometimes, there are certain conditions that cause someone to commit crime.
He urged judges to dispense justice based on the law and nothing else, adding that “when a defendant is convicted by the law that defendant will not feel that his/her conviction was based on malice.”
Cllr. Mulbah admonished defense counsel to consider their foremost obligation as providing adequate representation for their client and the court should in return allow the defendant to produce evidence.
The Solicitor General-designate urged prosecutors to “be bold enough to say that there is no evidence” to prosecute a particular case.
He said investigators also have a cardinal role to play in the prosecution of cases and warned them to base their report on facts, which will determine justice and where society goes.
“We have a good system let pay attention and protect it if this is done our country will be better for all of us,” Cllr. Mulbah said.
Key facilitators at the two-day sitting of the legal practitioners were Associate Justice Sie-Nyene Youh representing the Supreme Court; Atty. William Kollie, Training Coordinator of the James A. A. Pierre; Cllr. Nelson Chineh, Resident Faculty Judicial Training Institute and Cllr. Arthur Johnson, Project Consultant.