A former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Kwaku Ansa-Asare, believes a petition addressed to President John Dramani Mahama to stop the probe against suspended Chief Justice Gertrude Torkonoo has no merit.

The suspended Chief Justice filed an application on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, requesting an interlocutory injunction to halt all proceedings of the committee.

Aside from the Supreme Court suit, other private citizens have petitioned President Mahama to dissolve the committee probing the case, citing possible bias due to the alleged engagement between some committee members and Thaddues Sory, a lawyer for one of the petitioners seeking the removal of the Chief Justice from office.

According to court documents, the Chief Justice wants the Supreme Court to issue an order restraining the six-member committee, composed of Justices Gabriel Scott Pwamang and Samuel Kwame Adibu-Asiedu, as well as Daniel Yao Domelevo, Major Flora Bazuwaaruah Dalugo, and Professor James Sefah Dzisah, from proceeding with any inquiry related to three petitions brought against her.

The application also seeks to bar Justices Pwamang and Adibu-Asiedu from presiding or participating in any deliberations of the committee.

READ ALSO: Suspended CJ Torkornoo files injunction against committee probing her removal

In the case of Mr Sory, he was alleged to have met the justices at a restaurant in Accra on the same day the committee began an in-camera hearing of the case on May 15 per a petition addressed to President Mahama.

Several days after the issue, a CCTV video has emerged that captures some seconds of activities at the said restaurant on the said day.

After reviewing the video, Mr Ansa-Asare, who spoke in an interview on The Pulse on Joy News, admitted that there was an encounter which “didn’t last more than 20 seconds” but suggested that it was irrelevant to the case.

Based on the footage, Mr Ansa-Asare stated, “Thaddeus Sory was already seated there [in the restaurant] before the three others joined. Pwamang was not sighted (in the video) and therefore, conclusively, he might not have been one of the three justices that the Chief Justice has named".

He continued, “This didn’t last more than 20 seconds. There is considerable doubt as to the nature of their conversation. Whether the conversation centred around the ongoing petition, there is considerable doubt about that,” he observed.

In his opinion, “If we take Pwamang, he wasn’t there, and so it means that allegation is frivolous and can be dismissed without calling on Pwamang to answer at all”.

On the others, he elaborated, “Justice Asiedu was there, but we have all seen that the conversation was not about the ongoing petition. What can four or so people, you know, talk about in 20 seconds? I would say that it doesn’t measure up to the standard. But when we measure it against the fact that the action the Chief Justice has brought is seeking to have the two justices disqualified, legally, this is a matter or question of fact. And every question of fact will depend on the surroundings and circumstances of the fact of the case. It is not a question of law”.

Based on all the findings, Mr Ansa-Asare concluded that “asking the president to dissolve the committee probing the petition merely because of a 20-second encounter at a restaurant where the people had converged to celebrate their colleague’s birthday, I think it should be dismissed. I don’t think that on both precedence and rule of court and the law, this is something that the president should worry himself about. He has many more serious problems to tackle than spending time to talk about an encounter that didn’t last more than 20 seconds”.