The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence slammed on Maryam Sanda, the daughter-in-law of a former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
In a split judgment of four to one, a five-member panel of justices of the apex court restated the judicial pronouncement that ordered her death by hanging.
The court resolved all the issues she raised to set aside her conviction and the sentence against her and dismissed her appeal for want of merit.
In the lead verdict that was delivered by Justice Moore Adumein, the apex court held that the prosecution established her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
It held that the Court of Appeal’s decision that upheld the sentence that was passed by the trial court was unassailable.
The Supreme Court held that it was wrong for President Tinubu, being the head of the executive arm of the government, to seek to exercise his powers to grant a pardon over a case of culpable homicide, in respect of which an appeal was pending.
Sanda was convicted on January 27, 2020, by an Abuja High Court, which found her guilty of fatally stabbing
her husband, Bilyamin Bello, to death at their Abuja home in 2017.
She was subsequently sentenced to death by hanging.
Though she had already spent about six years and eight months at the Suleja prison, President Bola Tinubu, in the exercise of his executive powers, reduced her total sentence to 12 years.
