Oliver Baker-Vormawor is a lawyer and activist
Lawyer and activist, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, has explained the legal meaning of a ‘submission of no case’ after lawyers for Ashanti Regional Chairman for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, have proceeded to file one.
In a Facebook post on February 5, 2026, Barker-Vormawor said he had been swarmed with questions about what the process means, prompting him to offer a detailed explanation of the criminal trial procedure to the lay man’s understanding.
“I keep getting a lot of questions about what it means that Wontumi’s lawyers have been asked to file a submission of no case.
“While I was initially surprised at the sheer number of people who were confused about it, I quickly came to realise that as lawyers we make so much assumptions about information we put out there; we speak in jargon and don’t realise how much is lost in translation,” he stated.
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Barker-Vormawor explained that under Ghana’s criminal justice system, an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
“When you see someone being tried for a crime, it is always said that they are innocent until proven guilty. Under our law, it means you convince the court that the person committed the crime beyond all reasonable doubt,” he said.
He noted that every criminal offence has specific elements, known as the ‘ingredients of the crime,’ which the prosecution must establish.
“For instance, if you charge a person with murder, there are three things you need to prove: that a person is dead, that the accused person is the one who killed the dead person, and that the accused intended to kill the dead person,” he explained, adding that where intent is not proven, the appropriate charge would be manslaughter rather than murder.
According to him, after the prosecution calls all its witnesses and closes its case, the defence is ordinarily expected to open its case.
However, before doing so, the defence is allowed by law to file a ‘submission of no case’.
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“The law allows them to file legal arguments to show that the prosecution failed to prove one or more of the ingredients of the crime. This is what we call a ‘submission of no case’,” he indicated.
He illustrated the point by saying a defence lawyer could argue that the prosecution failed to prove that a supposed victim is dead or that the death was caused by the accused.
“I have an actual case where the accused person spent seven years in prison even though the person died from pneumonia, and not anything the accused had done,” Barker-Vormawor disclosed.
Relating the explanation to the ongoing case involving Wontumi, Barker-Vormawor said the defence is likely to argue that there was no mining activity at all, or that the prosecution failed to prove any mining that occurred was illegal.
“Or that even if it was illegal, the prosecution failed to show that I have anything to do with Akonta Mining,” he added.
He stressed that the submission of no case stage is meant to test whether the prosecution has established a prima facie case that requires the accused to answer.
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