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| High Court, where the Court of Appeal hearing was held |
The Court of Appeal today rejected an appeal against the conviction
of a Filipina and a Nigerian, who had been sentenced to 25 and 26 years in
prison for receiving a parcel that contained 2,971 grams of Ice and 418 grams
of ketamine.
“I am not
here to retry the case,” Justice of Appeal Kevin Zervos told former domestic helper Alma Montano and her
co-appelant Nwokeji Ifeanyi Canis,
who were convicted unanimously on June 30, 2023 by
a jury before Deputy High Court Judge D Yau. “I didn’t hear the evidence
like the jury did.”
In his decision issued after a break in the hearing, however,
Justice Zervos discussed the facts
presented to the court.
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He noted, for example, that the case revolved around whether
the two had known about the drugs inside the parcel that had been intercepted
by Customs officers in a delivery company’s logistics center.
Posing as delivery men, they arrested Montano after she received
the parcel at her former employer’s address. Nwokeji, an asylum seeker, was arrested after he received the parcel from Montano, who by then was
cooperating with the officers in a controlled delivery.
Justice Zervos said: “At trial, the sole
issue in respect of both counts was whether the 1st and 2nd
applicants had knowledge of the dangerous drug in the parcel…. The
prosecution’s case was that, based on all circumstantial evidence, the
irresistible inference was that both of them knew of the drugs in the parcel.”
A Whatsapp chat between the two, which was
found in both their mobile phones, suggests that “they were more than casual
acquaintances, the delivery of the parcel was well-planned and the shipment was
referred to as ‘our shipment,’” he said.
He rejected their grounds of appeal,
such as Montano’s complaint that it took two days for the jury to deliberate on
her guilt, which he said was not unusual in the judicial process.
She claimed she
was a victim of a drug operation involving “a football gang”, citing two
letters from Father John Wotherspoon who said cases against a number of women
from Indonesia and the Philippines had been dismissed because they were used by
a group of Nigerian men to traffic in dangerous drugs.
But Justice
Zervos noted that the letters did not give enough information about these cases,
such as their case numbers.
He also rejected Nwokeji’s claim that the parcel was not addressed to him, and did not have his fingerprints or DNA. The judge said it was never the prosecution's case that the second appellant had directly received the parcel containing the drugs.
What was not in dispute, according to the judge, was that Nwokeji (i) took possession of the parcel containing the drugs with a street value of $1.8 million on a public street from the 1st applicant; (ii) the drug traffickers would not have entrusted such a valuable quantity of drugs to a stranger for delivery; (iii) the 2nd applicant was apprehended holding an unlocked telephone that contained drug importation and trafficking messages with 1k imo (the intended recipient) when he picked up the parcel; (iv) the 1st applicant identified the 2nd applicant as Baby Loves, who instructed her to receive the parcel containing the drugs; (v) the 2nd applicant’s call records and messages corresponded with those on the 1st applicant’s mobile telephone and related events."
Judge Zervos said the applicants are entitled by law to renew their appeal, but they should be reminded that should they lose their bid for the second time, the Court may issue a direction for any loss of time spent in custody pending their appeals.
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