CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Research
The doctrine was stated with much clarity, weight and legal force in the Moses Jua case thus:
The position as firmly settled, is that if Mr. A was last seen alive with or in company of Mr. B and the next thing that happened, was the disappearance of Mr. A, the irresistible inference is that Mr. A was or had been killed by Mr. B. The onus is on Mr. B. to offer an explanation for the purposes of showing that he was not the one who killed Mr. A.
It would seem that the doctrine thrives in hasty conclusions in the sense that once someone disappears, no effort may be made to prove that he is dead before concluding that someone else had killed him. Nonetheless, the “last seen” doctrine is a mere presumption which, like all presumptions, is rebuttable. It means in effect however, that the law presumes that the person “last seen” with the deceased bears the full responsibility for his death if it turns out that the person last seen with him is dead.
In Nigeria, the doctrine is firmly settled, established and/or entrenched, but in other common law jurisdictions, it is applied with caution and flexibility so as to guard against a miscarriage of justice. Applying the doctrine to the law of evidence, the Indian Legal writers , maintained that:
The mere fact that the accused and the deceased were together in the field prior to the occurrence does not by itself lead to irresistible inference that the accused must have murdered the deceased…it could not be deemed to be conclusive unless it is further established that during the interval between the time when they were last seen together and the time at which the victim died, every circumstance was inconsistent with the innocence of the accused. The theory of last seen together is extremely a weak piece of evidence.
