seen to undermine the very foundation for the existence of the judiciary, namely justice, unaffected by technicalities and sophistry of the legal profession”. In other words, where a court is satisfied that despite any misdirection or irregularity in the conduct of the trial the conviction was safe, the court would uphold such conviction. 25. The Court of Appeal thoroughly examined the evidence led at the trial and the effect of the misdirection and came to the conclusion that there was a massive body of evidence against the Applicant which would lead to no other conclusion than that it was the Applicant and no one else who murdered the victim and that the quality of the evidence was such that no miscarriage of justice was occasioned. 26. A breach of Article 7.1 of the African Charter would only arise if the conviction had resulted from such misdirection. As pointed out by the Court of Appeal at page 47 of the judgement, the trial judge “meticulously evaluated the evidence and came to the only conclusion possible on the evidence”. 27. A number of decisions have been taken in the European Court of Justice on Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights which also provides for the presumption of innocence. In 2 discussing Article 6(2), R. Clayton and H. Tomilson observe that the Article does not prohibit presumption of facts and law and citing Salabiaku v. France (1988) 13 EHRR 379 paragraph 28 states that the State must however, “confine them within reasonable limits which take into account the 3 importance of what is at stake and maintain the rights of the defence” . A more appropriate discussion of Article 6(2) can be found in the Digest of Case-Law Relating to the European Convention on Human 4 Rights (1955-1967) where it is stated that,“if the lower court has not respected the principle of presumption of innocence, but the higher court in its decision has eliminated the consequences of this 5 vice in the previous proceedings, there has been no breach of Article 6(2)” . 28. As already discussed above, the Court of Appeal “meticulously evaluated the evidence” between pages 11-20, 62-74 and 77-111 of the judgement and was satisfied that despite the misdirection, there was adequate evidence to convict the Applicant of murder. 29. It should be noted here that it is for the courts of State Parties and not for the [African] Commission to evaluate the facts in a particular case and unless it is shown that the courts‟ evaluation of the facts were manifestly arbitrary or amounted to a denial of justice, the [African] Commission cannot substitute the decision of the courts with that of its own. It has not been shown that the courts evaluation of the evidence was in any way arbitrary or erroneous as to result in a failure of justice. The [African] Commission therefore finds that there is no basis for finding that the State Party violated its obligations underArticles 4 and 7.1. Alleged Violation of Article 5 30. The second issue relates to the allegation that the sentence of death in this case was a disproportionate penalty in the circumstances of this case and hence a violation of Article 5 of the Charter. 31. While it is accepted that the death penalty should be imposed after full consideration of not only the circumstances of the individual offence but also the circumstances of the individual offender, (InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights inDowner and Tracey v. Jamaica (41/2000) 14 April 2000), there is no rule of international law which prescribes the circumstances under which the death penalty may be imposed. It should be pointed out here that apart from stating the trend in other jurisdictions and decisions of other human rights bodies governed by specific statutes, it has not been established that the courts in this case did not consider the full circumstances before imposing the death penalty. If anything, the courts fully considered all the circumstances in this case (see pages 48-55 of the judgement of the Court of Appeal). It is clear that the submission that the imposition of the death penalty was disproportionate to the gravity of the crime in this case is based on an erroneous assumption of what amounts to extenuating circumstances. 32. Extenuating circumstances are facts bearing on the commission of the crime, which reduce the moral blameworthiness of the accused as distinct from his/her legal culpability. First, the facts or circumstances must be directly related to, or connected with, the criminal conduct in question. The