Due to Ike Ekwerenmadu’s and his family’s ongoing unfortunate ordeal, readers and netizens have been forced to learn two important legal lingos used often in criminal litigation and it is “conviction and sentencing”.
It all started last week when it trended that Ike Ekwerenmadu and his accomplices (wife and doctor) have been found guilty of human organ trafficking; he was therefore convicted of the criminal charges raised against him by the British government and he will be sentenced for the crime in subsequent date; people started to ask what is the difference between conviction and sentencing if there is any and which comes first.
What then is conviction and sentencing in criminal trials;
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A Sentence is the judgment formally pronounced by the court or judge upon an accused person after his conviction in a criminal prosecution, imposing the punishment to be inflicted upon him for the crime he committed; It most times reads; “you are hereby sentenced to “so so” years in prison”.
The primary meaning of the word conviction according to the Nigerian court of appeal in the case of Engineer Goodnews Agbi & Anor v. Chief Audu Ogbeh & 3 ors S.C. 63/2005 denotes the judicial determination of a case. It is a judgment which involves two matters, a finding of guilt or the acceptance of a plea of guilty followed by the sentence”.
A conviction refers to the outcome of a criminal trial. It is the act of proving or declaring a person guilty of a crime while the sentencing is the formal declaration by a court imposing a punishment on the accused person convicted of the crime.
A conviction can as well be said to mean that the court holds or finds the accused person guilty of the offence of the crimes he is being charged with under the relevant section(s) of the prevailing laws after the case has been proved beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecutor. The court then awards a punishment to the guilty person (afore-convicted) which is termed “a sentence”.
In criminal litigations, Conviction comes first and sentencing can follow immediately after the court has convicted or sentencing can be reserved for a later date. Section 248 of Nigeria’s Criminal Procedure Act is provided that if the court finds the accused guilty, the court shall pass a sentence on the accused (immediately) or make an order or reserve judgment and adjourn the case to some future day. Therefore, in practice and procedure, conviction comes first and sentencing follows immediately or subsequently.
Hence, in Ekwerenmadu’s case, the court in England after the trial found him guilty of the offence he is been accused of (convictions) and by the reason of his guilt, the court is to punish him by imposing on him a jail term (sentencing) which is reserved till May 2023.
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Ike Ekweremadu is a renowned Nigerian politician; a lawmaker and a former deputy senate president. In his desperation to save his ailing daughter who is suffering from kidney failure allegedly conspired to bring a 21 years old Lagos street trader to London and exploit him for his kidney. The young lad after getting to the United Kingdom raised alarm and the Uk authorities got involved; the Ekwerenmadus has been found guilty of the crime of organ trafficking and they are to be sentenced in May this year.