A man convicted of murdering his wife, a young doctor at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, lost his appeal after the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction and death sentence, relying on evidence that included a statement he made to his uncle hours after her death.

The case, 'Duah v The Republic', concerned the death of Agnes Yeboah, who was found dead in her room on April 12, 1985, with a knife wound to her chest. Her husband, Duah, claimed she had stabbed herself.

Lawyer Joseph Kofi Frimpong Ackah-Blay, who recounted the case in a Facebook post on October 27, 2026, detailed how the court rejected Duah’s account and upheld the conviction.

According to Ackah-Blay, Duah and Agnes had married secretly despite opposition from her father. By 1985, Agnes was working as a doctor at Korle-Bu and had a six-month-old daughter with Duah, who was living in London.

“It starts as a love story. Agnes Yeboah and a young man named Duah knew each other in Accra, then found each other again as students in India, where his father happened to be Ghana's High Commissioner.

“The families were friends. The two fell in love and wanted to marry, but her father would not have it. So they married quietly, first in India and then at the Registrar-General's office in Accra, without telling her parents,” he shared.

Ackah-Blay said Duah arrived in Accra on April 9, 1985, and spent three days with Agnes. However, at about 2:30 a.m. on April 12, he went to his uncle’s home and handed him a bag, a note and £1,000 intended for the couple’s baby.

According to the uncle, Dr Francis Duah, his nephew then made a chilling statement in Twi: “Meku Aggie,” meaning “I have killed Aggie.”

Duah reportedly told the police that he and Agnes had agreed to a suicide pact. However, his account changed when he appeared in court, where he claimed that Agnes had stabbed herself and urged him to do the same.

“Duah's own story kept moving. To the police, he spoke of a suicide pact. By the time he got to court, it was all her idea, and he had never agreed. They had been lying in bed, talking and making love, he said, when he heard a cry. She was holding out the knife, telling him it was finished, it was his turn, he should not be a coward. He cut his finger taking it from her,” Ackah-Blay recounted.

Duah further claimed that he tried to save his wife by pressing a towel against the wound before leaving the room and locking the door.

“He pressed a towel to her wound. And then? He got dressed, walked out, and locked the door behind him. The building was full of doctors. He did not knock on a single door. He said he left the knife in the room. But nobody went into that room until the police forced it open, and the knife was not there,” Ackah-Blay added.

The knife was never recovered, and there were no eyewitnesses to the incident. However, Dr Seth Koranteng, who assisted with the post-mortem examination, testified that the wound required considerable force and that he did not believe it had been self-inflicted.

The High Court in Accra convicted Duah of murder on September 12, 1985, and sentenced him to death. He subsequently appealed, challenging the admission of his uncle’s testimony and the medical evidence presented during the trial.

Court upholds conviction

The Court of Appeal accepted that the words Duah allegedly spoke to his uncle could not be treated as part of the killing itself, as they were made hours after Agnes’ death and at a different location.

However, the court ruled that the statement was admissible as a confession, finding no evidence that Duah had been threatened or induced to make it.

The court also examined the medical evidence, particularly the direction of the wound, which ran upwards. Referring to a forensic medicine textbook cited by the defence, it noted that wounds running from below upwards generally point to homicide.

It consequently rejected Duah’s account that Agnes had taken her own life, describing the suicide explanation as “a sham”.

On July 16, 1987, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal as wholly unmeritorious, thereby upholding Duah’s murder conviction and death sentence.

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