A member of the NDC legal team, Abraham Amaliba, has argued the decision by the Supreme Court to make all criminal offences bailable is likely to bring undue pressure on prosecutors and judges.
He fears the development would likely let many criminals go unprosecuted.
Although he lauded lawyer Martin Kpebu for securing that judgment, he thinks more needs to be done to ensure its enforcement.
‘‘I agree it will decongest our prisons but it will also put a huge burden on our prosecutors because it is not staffed with the requisite number of personnel needed and that for me is not the best. What this means is that the state will be under immense pressure to speed up the process for prosecution.
“With this ruling [judgement] we need to ensure that we put in place a system to employ more lawyers else a lot of people will go home unprosecuted’’.
He has further warned criminal minded persons not to rejoice as the judgement is not automatic condition to bail.
‘‘The language of the law says that a court shall refuse to grant bail so there are some offences which were non-bailable but does this mean that it is an automatic condition to be granted bail when you commit an offence? NO. And I want to tell criminal minded persons that they will still have to meet the conditions in 96(6) and 5’’.
The Supreme Court struck out Section 96 (7) of Act 30. This makes the law on non-bailable offences unconstitutional. This means a court that has jurisdiction to try cases such as murder, rape, treason, piracy and defilement has the authority to grant bail.
By Sarah Apenkroh | 3FM | 3news.com