Jubilation across the world accompanied the news that policeman, Derek Chauvin, had been convicted of the murder of George Floyd, whose homicide took place in 2020 in Minneapolis, and they were for very good reasons.
After three weeks of a high-tension trial in this city in the north of the United States, the 12 jurors of various ethnic origins, who had been deliberating since Monday, concluded that the accused was guilty of the three charges against him.
According to africanews.com, the already dismissed 45-year-old police agent, filtering a mask on his face, did not show any particular emotion at the wording of the verdict delivered by Judge Peter Cahill.
The ex-policeman was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody.
Like the rest of the world, many have been celebrating this victory but more particularly in Ghana, people have had cause to revisit the issue of how slow the wheels of justice grinds here.
One of such cases that have been grinding for so long in our courts is the popular one of the killing of the late Major Maxwell Mahama at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central region in 2017.
The late Major was on duty at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central Region, when, on May 29, 2017, some residents allegedly mistook him for an armed robber and lynched him.
Videos that emerged later showed how the mob had ignored his persistent pleas that he was an officer of the Ghana Armed Forces, generating a lot of discussions on the killing afterwards.
Four years on, the evidential videos of how the late Major was murdered, was only shown in open court on April 13, 2021. That, already, is nowhere close to the end of such a high-profile case.
In the USA, after three weeks of hearing the case, the court was able to arrive at the convictions of guilty of all charges on Derek Chauvin, the main suspect in the case.
“George Floyd’s murder trial lasted three weeks. Major Mahama’s murder case has been in court since 2017, and the video of the murder is now being shown in court. We radically need to improve the speed of our judicial system. Or?” anti-corruption investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni wrote.
Already too, a case such as the murder of the late Member of Parliament for Abuakwa North, JB Danquah-Adu, who was killed in his bedroom in February 2016, is still at Ghana’s courts with no end immediately in sight.
It remains a wonder if Ghana’s judicial system will get to such a fast-paced level any time soon so that, like the family of the late George Floyd (whose death has become a symbol of police brutality against minorities in the USA), they can proudly say, “It is a victory for those who fight for justice against injustice… a turning point in history.”
Until such a day in our country’s history, we wait with our hopes still hanging on thin lines.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
