Ex-Chief Justice acquitted of murder

Liberia’s former Justice Minister and Chief Justice Gloria Maya Musu-Scott has been acquitted of the murder of her niece by the country’s Supreme Court. BBC News reports that the 70-year-old and three female relatives had been sentenced to life in prison for the killing in February 2023 of Charlotte Musu (29). The case gripped the nation as Musu-Scott had been a well-known judge in Liberia, a champion of women rights and at the time of her conviction had just won a significant case against the electoral commission as part of the then-opposition party’s legal team. She served as Liberia’s Justice Minister and later as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court until her retirement in 2003. Musu-Scott and her three relatives were found guilty by a lower court in December of stabbing her niece and also for conspiracy and making a false report to the police. They were sentenced to life in January. The former Chief Justice had denied the charge, saying the niece had been killed by an ‘assassin’ who had entered her home in the capital, Monrovia. Delivering the appeal verdict, Chief Justice Sie-A-Nyene Yuoh ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to link the former judge and her relatives to the crime. ‘The state did not meet the burden of proof to warrant the conviction of the defendants. Therefore, the defendants are hereby acquitted of the crimes of murder, criminal conspiracy... as charged in the indictment,’ Youh ruled. The top court said the evidence presented by the prosecutors failed to identify the specific individual responsible for the murder. Prosecutors had earlier acknowledged that the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence.