A Nigerian court sentenced Ian Millar, a 54 year old...

A Nigerian court sentenced Ian Millar, a 54 year old British businessman, to death by hanging for murdering his 43-year-old partner Anne Marie Gale, on April 12, 2002, in their home in Lagos.
Millar pleaded not guilty, but, after hearing medical evidence and testimony from domestic staff at the couple's home, Justice Grace Onyeabor sentenced him to death, officials said.
The death sentence is mandatory in Nigeria for anyone convicted of murder, but very few if any sentences have been carried out in recent years under an informal moratorium instituted by several state governors.
Innocent Chukwuma, president of the Nigerian human rights association the Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN), said that Millar might languish on death row "for a very long time.
"There's a sort of informal moratorium on executions. Governors have not been signing execution orders. Some convicted murderers have been waiting in jail for between 10 and 20 years," he told AFP.
According to a report in the Nigerian daily The Guardian, the state prosecutor admitted her evidence against Millar was circumstantial but argued that it still amounted to proof of guilt. Gale was found in the couple's home in Apapa, Lagos' harbour district, with injuries consistent with her having been strangled to death, according to medical testimony, the report said.
Domestic staff working for the couple testified that there had been no break-in at the home, and the cook said the victim's dinners had gone uneaten for a week before her body was found.
Millar's defence counsel argued that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt, but did not convince Justice Onyeabor.
"The sentence of this court upon you, Ian Millar, is that you be hanged from the neck until you be dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul," she concluded, the report said.