SC challenged over “contemptuous letters”

A Ghanaian Law Professor, Kweku Asare has disagreed with an assertion by the Supreme Court that merely writing letters to the court is contemptuous.

He said as long as a citizen writes to the Supreme Court to bring the court’s attention to certain issues of importance concerning a pending case, “there’s nothing wrong with that”.

Prof. Asare, however, clarified that writing to the court with the intention of bribing a Judge on a matter being heard is “clearly wrong”.

The President of the nine-member panel of Justices hearing the election petition case, Mr. William Atuguba, on Wednesday July 10, 2013 described as “contemptuous”, the mere act of writing letters to the court and, therefore, warned the public to stop writing those letters on issues concerning the hearing.

At the start of hearing on Wednesday, Justice Atuguba bewailed that such “unwholesome” development “afflicting” the Bench is “wrong”.

He said the court would want to excuse the writers of such letters as lay people who may be ignorant about the fact that it is "technically wrong to correspond with the court in this manner”.

Some of the letters written to the court concerned the summoning and imprisoning of Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Searchlight Newspaper Ken Kuranchie and communications team member of the governing National Democratic Congress, Stephen Atubiga for criminal contempt.

Former Presidential Aspirant Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy is among those who wrote some of such open letters to the court to express concerns about the court’s exercise of its contempt powers.

Prof. Kweku Asare told Joy FM’s news analysis programme ‘Newsfile’ on Saturday July 13, 2013 that Ghana could learn from countries such as India where the judicial system encourages ordinary citizens to write letters to the Justices as a way of making them feel part of the entire judicial system.