The Act Of Conviction

Conviction simply put is a judgement of condemnation entered by a court having jurisdiction.The judgment of a court must end with a finding of guilty or not guilty. And a finding of guilty is a conviction. In otherwords, a conviction is an act of a court of competent jurisdiction adjudging a person to be guilty of a punishable offence. An order of a court binding a party over to be of good behaviour is a conviction. The judgment of a court must convict the defendant before he is sentenced. It must be expressly stated or discernible from the judgment. In R. V. Ekp (1947) 12 WACA 153, the defendant was sentenced to death for murder. On appeal against the conviction, the defendant contended that the trial judge failed to convict him before sentencing him. The court of appeal held that although there was no formal verdict of guilty of murder on the record, there was sufficient evidence on record showing that the judge found the defendant guilty of murder before passing a sentence of death.
Where a defendant is charged and tried for more than one count of alleged offences or several defendants are charged for one or more counts of alleged offences, the court must deliver a verdict in respect of each count or accused person as the case may be.
Because it is trite law that separate verdicts must be returned in respect of each of the accused persons. In Oyediran ors v. the Republic (1967) N. M. LR 122 at p. 125. Six accused persons were charged to court for several offences. At the end of their trial, they were all convicted. However, the court failed to enter separate verdicts on each of the counts of offences on each of the accused persons. The Supreme Court refused to rectify the failure of the trial judge to deliver separate verdicts on each count of offence.
Note that this is a mere irregularity which can be rectified by the appellate court.
The general rule that no person can be convicted for an offence with which he was not charged, has two exception: (i) The general provisions of law that a defendant who is not found guilty of a grave offence for which he was charged may be convicted of a lesser offence.
(ii) Specific provisions of particular offences which permit the conviction of a defendant for a lesser offence different from the one with which he was expressly charged. In Maja v. the state 1980 (i) N.C.R. 212, the accused person was charged with attempted murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous harm. The prosecution was unable to prove the charges against the accused person. However, the evidence before the court revealed that the accused person in fact shot at some men he found digging sand on his land. Relying on the above exception as stated in section 179 (i) C.R.A. the judge convicted the accused for the lesser offence of unlawfully doing grievous harm. On appeal, the court upheld the conviction for a lesser offence.
The court is not under obligation to conduct another trial on the lesser offence before convicting the defendant because the lesser offence is subsumed in the grave offence.

Nkechi Bright Ewere