By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

In any legal contest, the burden of proof has always rested with the prosecution or the person who brings the action in the lawsuit. The prosecutor has the onerous duty to prove the allegation with the support of credible evidence. It is not the responsibility of the accused to prove in court that he or she is innocent.

Therefore, when you hear that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, all it means is that, it is the obligation or duty of the prosecution to prove that the evidence they have presented in court is rock solid. In a criminal case, most often, a prosecutor bears the burden of proof.

The prosecution in a criminal case must present solid evidence to the court or jury that the accused person did commit the crime. It is not enough to accuse! You need to prove beyond every reasonable doubt. You need to prove that the accused is in fact guilty.

This brings us to the pending Supreme Court (SC) petition case initiated by Nana Akufo-Addo and Co whereby they have made loads of allegations but their only available evidence are thousands of pink sheets. Worse still, they have not been able to produce anybody or anything outside the pink sheets to support their claims.

If you claim that somebody stole your goat and you go to court, you must prove that you either saw the person stealing your goat or somebody saw the accused stealing your goat. It is definitely not enough to make that allegation based on circumstantial evidence.

Yet, we have Nana Akufo-Addo who does not even know the number of pink sheets he submitted to the SC sitting in front of his laptop and making allegations based on laptop analysis. And strangely enough he wants the SC Justices to run with such bogus claims.

In court, we all saw that the NPP folks with all their so-called knowledge do not know the laws regulating the conduct of elections in the country. That is why they sought to give their own interpretations of what they thought the electoral laws should be. Their knowledge of how the Electoral Commission (EC) operates is highly subjective and we saw Dr Bawumia who thought he could equate academic brilliance with evidence in court proceedings struggling very badly. How sad!

It is in this vein that Philip Addison, lead counsel for the NPP, was caught off guard when one of the justices asked if his explanation on how many pink sheets he submitted to the SC addresses the evidential burden of prove. Addison who did not know what to say was forced to simply answer, “Yes it does”. Just that? Was that all Addison could say?

But Addison may have forgotten that to date Akufo-Addo has not been able to furnish the SC with any other evidence apart from pink sheets. And to make matters worse, Bawumia told the court that he and the NDC and the EC were not at the over 11,000 polling stations to witness any irregularities, malpractices, vote padding, unsigned pink sheets, stealing or any other allegation you can imagine.

So where is the solid evidence? In what situation did Philip Addison discharge the burden of proof? How was he able to prove beyond every reasonable doubt that President Mahama and the EC stole the elections from him? Was Addison able to prove in court that the EC colluded with presiding officers not to sign some of the pink sheets in order to help President Mahama win the election?

Was Addison able to prove that the EC has used serial numbers on pink sheets in past elections to declare elections, therefore, the duplicated serial numbers on the pink sheets made Akufo-Addo to lose the election? Or was Addison able to convince the court that the EC deliberately duplicated serial numbers on the pink sheets to steal the results from Akufo-Addo?

Did we hear Philip Addison proving that the EC stole votes from Akufo-Addo and gave them President Mahama? These are some of the questions which the Justices would ask before determining the outcome of the petition case. Therefore, the high decibel hope being exhibited by the NPP supporters must be toned down because they have not been able to discharge the burden of proof in this bogus case.

nakuakoduah@yahoo.com