A. Objection based on failure to file the Application within a reasonable time
38. The Respondent State submits that “the judgment of the Appeal Court was
delivered on 12th March 2013 while the Applicant filed the instant Application
on 14 March 2019. This indicates that the Application before this Hon. Court
has been filed six (6) years after local remedies were exhausted.” According
to the Respondent State, therefore, the time taken to file this Application
cannot be considered as reasonable.
39. The Respondent State further submits, based on the Court’s jurisprudence,
that although Article 56(6) of the Charter does not set a time limit within
which applications must be filed, the Court, in determining reasonableness
of time, must take into consideration, inter alia, the particular situation of the
Applicant. Given the preceding, the Respondent State submits that “the
particular situation of the Applicant […] do not constitute justifiable grounds
for the fact that it took the Applicant six (6) years to file this Application.”
Relying on the record of the proceedings before the High Court and Court
of Appeal, the Respondent State further submits that the Applicant “is
financially stable, that she is literate and had legal assistance and advocates
throughout the proceedings in domestic courts.” It is also the Respondent
State’s submission that “the Applicant has not advanced any grounds to
account for the delay of up to six years before the filing of this matter.”
*
40. In her Reply, the Applicant raises the following reasons as justifying the time
it took for her to file the Application, after the exhaustion of local remedies:
a.
After her conviction she remained incarcerated on death row with limited
access to information and her movement was restricted;
b.
The long years of incarceration and time on death row led to the
deterioration of her mental and physical health and she suffered the
“death row phenomenon” in addition to her pre-existing physical ailments
caused by her HIV positive status. In the same vein, the Applicant was
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