By Lincoln G. Peters
Liberia’s former Chief Justice Cllr. Gloria Musu Scott and three of her family members have been sentenced to lifetime imprisonment weeks after jurors found them guilty of the murder of Charloe Musu.
Presiding Criminal Court “A” Judge Roosevelt Z. Willie sentenced Cllr. Scott and Gertrude Newton, Alice Johnson, and Rebecca Youdeh Wisner on Tuesday, 9 January 2024.
Reading an over forty-page ruling, Judge Willie confirmed the jury decision against the accused and sentenced them in keeping with the facts and circumstances as determined by the eleven jurors.
The judge ordered the defendants’ lifetime imprisonment in recognition of Liberia’s abolition of the death sentence against those found guilty of murder.
“…The defendants – Cllr. Gloria Musu Scott, Gertrude Newton, Alice Johnson, and Rebecca Youdeh are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment for the death and murder of Charloe Musu,” Judge Willie ruled.
But the defense lawyers have taken exception to the ruling and announced an appeal to the Supreme Court of Liberia.
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Eleven out of twelve trial jurors had earlier concurred through a verdict handed Thursday, 21 December 2023 that Cllr. Scott and her three family members were responsible for Charloe Musu’s murder. The late Charloe is Cllr. Scott’s daughter.
Throughout the trial, the accused maintained their innocence and pleaded not guilty to the indictment.
During the trial, the defense lawyer’s pathologist Dr. Matthias I. Okoye testified that the stabbings that killed Charloe were caused/done by a muscular male.
He also noted that none of the defendants could cause these wounds.
Dr. Okoye detailed that there was a foreign DNA of a male found in the middle fingernail of the left hand of the victim.
Notwithstanding, the jury and the judge decided that the accused were guilty of Charloe’s murder.
Their trial came after sanctioned Monrovia Mayor and ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) secretary general Jefferson Koijee denied ordering the brutal attack in which Charloe was murdered.
Liberia’s former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) boss Cllr. Jerome Verdier accused Koijee of allegedly ordering Monrovia City Police official Varlee Telleh to carry out the attack.
Both Koijee and Telleh have denied the allegation that they were responsible for the attack at Cllr. Scott’s Brewerville residence.
Cllr. Scott said she had reported to police authorities two incidents of attacks at her home, but no action was taken before the third incident led to Charloe’s murder.
However, Cllr. Scott and her three family members were instead indicted by Liberian prosecutors for Charloe’s murder.
Speaking in an interview with journalists after the court’s sentence, defense lawyer Atty. Dickson Tamba expressed disappointment, arguing that the doubts in the case are numerous.
“The doubts in [the case] are numerous. There were numerous doubts in this case. Scientific doubts were created,” Atty. Dickson lamented.
“The Liberian pathologist conducted their autopsy and said that he found a male chromosome, but in his judgment, it was herniate bacterial. After scientific examination, a foreign pathologist found that the DNA of a male was in the deceased. And so, we are taking an appeal to the Supreme Court, and we believe this decision will be reversed,” he noted.
