Let’s revisit Ametewee v The State [1964] GLR 551

The facts of Ametewee v The State are intertwined with an important moment in Ghana’s political history.

On 2 January 1964, Seth Ametewee, a police constable on duty at Flagstaff House, opened fire at President Kwame Nkrumah with the intention of killing him. Nkrumah survived the attack, but one of the bullets struck Salifu Dagarti, a police officer serving as part of the President’s security detail, and fatally wounded him.

Salifu Dagarti is remembered in accounts of the incident for his role in protecting the President during the attack.

His death transformed what was an attempted assassination of Nkrumah into a fatal incident in which a member of the presidential security detail lost his life.

Dagarti was subsequently accorded a state burial with full military honours.

Ametewee was charged with the murder of Dagarti. His defence was, in substance, that although he had intended to kill President Nkrumah, he had never intended to kill Dagarti. The Supreme Court rejected this argument and upheld his conviction.

The Court applied the principle of transferred intention where a person intends to kill one person but, in carrying out that intention, accidentally kills another, the intention to kill may be transferred to the person actually killed.

Thus, although Dagarti was not Ametewee’s intended victim, Ametewee’s intention to kill Nkrumah was sufficient to establish the requisite intention for Dagarti’s murder.

The case therefore remains a leading Ghanaian authority on transferred intention, while also preserving the memory of Salifu Dagarti, the security officer who lost his life during the attempt on President Nkrumah.