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SUSPEND CHIEF JUSTICE SEEKS SUPREME COURT INTERVENTION TO HALT WORK OF COMMITTEE PROBING HER REMOVAL
By : KPABITEY A J PRINCE
Suspended Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo has filed an application at the Supreme Court seeking to halt the work of a committee set up by President John Mahama to investigate petitions for her removal from office.
The suit filed on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, is praying the apex court to grant an interlocutory injunction to suspend all proceedings of the six-member committee until a final decision is made on the matter.
According to the court documents, the Chief Justice is also asking the Supreme Court to bar the committee—made up of Justices Gabriel Scott Pwamang and Samuel Kwame Adibu-Asiedu, former Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo, Major Flora Bazuwaaruah Dalugo, and Professor James Sefah Dziasah—from conducting any inquiry into the petitions filed against her.
In addition, she seeks an order specifically restraining Justices Pwamang and Adibu-Asiedu from presiding over or participating in any deliberations of the committee.
The Chief Justice’s legal team, Dame and Partners, is also seeking a suspension of the presidential warrant for her suspension, issued under Article 146(10) of the 1992 Constitution, pending the outcome of the case.
This latest legal challenge comes on the same day the Supreme Court dismissed two separate suits seeking to halt the committee’s work.
In one of the dismissed suits, the apex court, by a 4–1 majority, rejected an application brought by private citizen Theodore Kofi Atta-Quartey, who had challenged the removal process.
Earlier that day, the same panel, also in a 4–1 decision, dismissed a similar application filed by the Centre for Citizenship, Constitutional and Electoral Systems (CenCES), which argued that President Mahama’s suspension of the Chief Justice was unconstitutional and that the committee’s proceedings should be halted.
The five-member panel of the Supreme Court comprised Justices Paul Baffoe-Bonnie (Presiding), Issifu Omoro Tanko Amadu, Yonny Kulendi, Henry Anthony Kwofie, and Yaw Asare Darko. Justice Darko was the lone dissenter in both rulings.