AG seeks Supreme Court review of ruling on criminal disclosure rules in GHC49.1M NSB case

The Attorney-General has returned to the Supreme Court to seek a review of part of its own decision on the scope of disclosures in criminal trials.

Acting through the Deputy Attorney-General, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, the state is asking the apex court to clarify a key portion of its earlier ruling on the Practice Direction on Further Disclosures.

The move stems from an application previously filed by former Minister of State Charles Adu-Boahen and his wife, Angela Adjei-Boateng, in which they sought to bar the High Court judge trying their case, after a ruling on disclosures they considered unfavourable. The Supreme Court dismissed that application, allowing the criminal trial to proceed.

Although the outcome favoured the prosecution, the Attorney-General took issue with one aspect of the judgment. The ordinary panel held that the prosecution must disclose materials “in its possession and connected to the case”, rather than materials in its possession and “relevant” as stated in the original Practice Direction.

In the review application, Dr Srem-Sai argues that by removing the word relevant without inserting an equivalent test, the court effectively rewrote the disclosure regime. He warned that, left unchanged, the ruling could be misunderstood as requiring disclosure based purely on possession, without a clear requirement that the requested documents bear a real connection to the issues at trial.

He is therefore asking the Supreme Court to restore the word relevance in its ordinary, non-technical sense, or to explicitly substitute it with the phrase “connected with the matter before the Court”, so that a discernible nexus between the material and the case remains at the heart of criminal disclosure.

Counsel for Adu-Boahen, Samuel Atta Akyea, is opposing the move. He maintains that the Attorney-General has not met the strict standard for review, insisting that no fundamental error of law or miscarriage of justice has been shown. In his view, the court’s existing formulation — requiring disclosure of materials “connected to the case” — already captures the necessary link and adequately addresses the concern raised by the state.

Mr Atta Akyea also rejected suggestions that the court breached natural justice by not inviting further argument on the meaning of relevance, pointing out that the Supreme Court is entitled to undertake its own legal research and interpretation.

When the matter was called on Wednesday, 14 January, a seven-member review panel chaired by Justice Lovelace Johnson announced that its ruling was not ready. The case has been adjourned to 28 January for the decision to be delivered.