***Sentences One to 14 Years Imprisonment
Two Rivers State High Courts sitting in Port Harcourt yesterday sentenced four persons to death by handing for the kidnapping and murder of a lawyer, Sampson Worlu and a woman, Helen Ibiba Bobmanuel.
While Hon. Justice Chiwendu Nwogu sentenced three people, Chiwendu Alozie, Wilfred Jumbo and Gift Amadi, for the murder of Worlu in 2015, Hon. Justice Silverline Iragonima, sentenced Telema Amaso to death for strangling ate Bobmanuel to death in 2013.
Iragonima also sentenced one Ndubisi Chukwuemeka to 14 years imprisonment for being an accessory to the fact of murder of Bobmanuel.
Delivering the judgement, Nwogu, said evidence provided by the prosecution team and the confessional statements by the accused are weighty enough and the court relied on them to deliver the judgment.
The trial judge said the court is convinced that they committed the crime and the law can not look the other way round.
LEADERSHIP gathered that one Chijioke Wisdom, who was arrested along with the three convicted persons died while in prison custody.
In her own judgement, Iragonima, said the first and second defendants were convicted because overwhelming evidence before the court including the confessional statements given to the police indicted them of committing the crime.
She said even though the first defendant, Telema Amaso denied and retracted his confessional statements he failed to convince the court that he never committed the crime.
On the conviction of the second defendant Ndubuisi Chukwuemeka for stealing, Justice Silverline Iragonima said the court found him guilty because his claims that he never knew that the first defendant has committed crime did not convince the court to discharge him of the offense.
