The High Court will today, July 11, rule on Assin North MP James Gyakye Quayson’s application for a stay of proceedings in his ongoing criminal case. 

The applicant is praying the Court for an order to stay the proceedings in the court pending the determination of the appeal filed in the Court on June 27, 2023.

An Accra High Court presided over by Justice Maame Ekue Yanzuh on June 23, 2023, delivered a ruling, dismissing the motion by the applicant herein for a review and/or variation of previous orders of the court dated June 16, 2023.

The applicant, dissatisfied with the ruling, has appealed against the ruling.

His lawyers subsequently filed a stay proceedings to allow for the Court of Appeal to hear its appeal to review a decision by the trial judge to hear the case on a daily basis.

According to his lead counsel, Tsatsu Tsikata any decision that does grant their stay in the proceedings will be prejudging the appeal. 

However, Attorney-General Godfred Dame has opposed the application.

The Supreme Court initially nullified Mr Quayson’s election as the MP for Assin North over holding Canadian citizenship and being a Ghanaian at the time he filed his nomination to contest the election in 2020.

He is now facing charges of perjury and deceiving a public officer.

Upon a by-election conducted by the Electoral Commission, the people of Assin North Constituency re-elected him to represent them in Parliament.

The applicant said the appeal was likely to succeed in the light of the errors of law set out in the notice of appeal, including the endorsement, in effect, of prejudice to a fair trial clearly in breach of his constitutional rights to a fair trial.

He said the decision of the Court that evidence of extremely prejudicial, unjustified and insulting remarks by the Attorney-General was not relevant to the determination of the application for review, was clearly in error.

“That the decision of the Court on June 23, 2023, was contradictory to the decision of the Court on June 21, 2023, when an objection by the Attorney-General to the supplementary affidavit filed in support of the application for review was dismissed on the basis that the averments in the supplementary affidavit were relevant to the allegations about the extremely prejudicial, unjustified and insulting remarks of the Attorney-General,” he said.

He said the ruling of June 23, 2023, which was the subject matter of the appeal filed, amounted to endorsing the conduct of the Attorney-General which was complained of in the application for review.