Senator Dino Melaye, a former lawmaker representing Kogi West District in the National Assembly, has been discharged and acquitted by the Federal Capital Territory High Court of charges related to attempted suicide and escape from custody. The federal government had arraigned Melaye on March 5, 2019, on a six-count charge, alleging that he attempted to escape from police custody on April 24, 2018, while being transported to Lokoja, Kogi State capital.<\/p>\n
According to the prosecution, Melaye forced his way out of the vehicle, broke the glass with his elbow, and threatened to harm himself, potentially causing trouble for the police officers. However, Melaye pleaded not guilty to the accusations and filed a no-case submission through his counsel, Professor Mike Ozekhome.<\/p>\n
In the ruling, Justice Oriji upheld Melaye’s no-case submission on two counts, including threat to injure public officers and attempt to commit suicide, and ordered him to enter his defense on the remaining four counts. However, Justice Oriji ultimately ruled that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubts against Melaye in the remaining four counts, leading to his discharge and acquittal.<\/p>\n
As reported, Justice Oriji stated, “The verdict of the court is that the defendant is not guilty of the charges in courts 1,3,4 and 6. The defendant, Senator Dino Melaye is discharged and acquitted.” This ruling brings an end to the lengthy legal battle between Melaye and the federal government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senator Dino Melaye, a former lawmaker representing Kogi West District in the National Assembly, has been discharged and acquitted by the Federal Capital Territory High Court of charges related to attempted suicide and escape from custody. The federal government had arraigned Melaye on March 5, 2019, on a six-count charge, alleging that he attempted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":51079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[1564],"class_list":["post-51078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","tag-sen-dino-melaye"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51080,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51078\/revisions\/51080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}