On March 29, 2021, the Presiding judge of the Eleventh (11) Judicial Circuit Court in Bomi County, His Honor J. Kennedy Peabody, sentenced Amadu F. Gray to life imprisonment for murdering victim Abdulaye B.V. Johnson. Rambo and T. Boy are on the run in Kalabak, Dewein District, Bomi County.
Judge Peabody, in this final judgment, stated that the indictment and the oral and documentary evidences adduced by the parties in the matter, and taking notes of the verdict return by the trial of fact in the matter, “the court hereby incorporates said verdict herein to form a cogent part of its final judgment, the court is hereby adjudged and finds the defendant Gray guilty of the crime of murder.”
Judge Peabody indicated that Sections 50.5 and 14.1 of the Penal Law of Liberia notes that, having committed a felony of the first degree, the defendant was hereby sentenced to life imprisonment. He also ordered the clerk of court to issue a commitment to the Sheriff of the court to have defendant Gray imprisoned for lifetime at the Tubmanburg Central Prison, Bomi County.
He explained, “As to the issue number one, the answer is a big ‘no’. Under the law, only the writ of arrest or summons brings a defendant under the jurisdiction of the court. Our law also provides that the defendant must be present during trial at all times except during the hearing motion.”
He continued that in the instant where T. Boy and Rambo were not arrested and brought under the jurisdiction of the court, they are only being named in the indictment and the writ; hence, they are not on trial before the court. “The only defendant before the court for trial is Gray. The honorable Supreme Court, speaking in the case Scanship LIB Inc vs Flomo 41LLR page 181 (2002), the jurisdiction of court is vested in them by the statutes creating them, and anything outside of that jurisdiction is void AB Initio. It is the writ of summons or arrest that confer jurisdiction,” he said.
It can be recalled that the plaintiff, Republic of Liberia, in its complaint in the indictment alleged that on December 31, 2020 the defendant, Amadu F. Gray, Alias Twenty-One Minutes, age 26, Rambo and T. Boy, conspired knowingly and maliciously, with criminal mind and intent, to gruesomely murder victim Abdulaye B.V. Johnson, take away his motorbike and dump his body in the bush in Kalabak, Dewein District, Bomi County, absconding to an unknown location.
According to the plaintiff, defendant Gray informed co-defendant Rambo and T. Boy that he was indebted to his boss, Weah, at the amount of L$18,000; as a result, the defendant conspired prior to the commission of the crime of murder and misled the victim that they were chattering his motorbike from Caldwell, New Georgia, to Bomi County, in order to murder him, take away his motorbike and sell it to settle defendant Gray’s debt to Weah, whose “kekeh” Gray drives.