Lawyer Kofi Amankwaa and the Poor Quality of Ghanaian Journalism

On January 22, 2024, a story appeared in America’s foremost “Newspaper of Record,” that is, The New York Times, in which a Ghanaian-born lawyer who had been licensed to practice in New York State for nearly 30 years, by the name of Kofi Amankwaa, 69 years old, and his son, Kofi Amankwaa, Jr., 37 years old, were reported to have been charged with orchestrating a fraudulent immigration application scheme over the course of a seven-year period. The story went on to state that Lawyer Amankwaa and his son were awaiting criminal prosecution and trial for conduct that carried a combined maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment each.

The Amankwaas were charged with two counts of criminal misconduct, namely, “Conspiracy to Defraud the Federal Government of the United States of America” and carried a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. The second and final count which carried a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, had to do with something called “Immigration Fraud” (See “Lawyer and Son Ensnared Hundreds of Immigrants in Fraud Scheme, US Says” New York Times 1/22/24).

Now, what we are concerned with here are three basic elements of good journalism. First of all, the afore-referenced news story, bylined Claire Fahy, only stated that the main subject of investigation for Immigration Fraud was “a Bronx Lawyer” and then the mention of his son as a suspected criminal accomplice. The article did not mention the original nationality or country-of-birth of Mr. Kofi Amankwaa. Yet almost all the Ghanaian media portals and websites and, one presumes, print and the electronic media as well, led their stories with the invariable headline of “Ghanaian Lawyer Sentenced to 15 Years’ Imprisonment in the United States.”

The problem with this sort of cavalier headline was that the newsmaker, namely, Mr. Amankwaa, who, by the way, is personally known to the author of this column, has yet to be officially trialed before a judge and a panoply or a full suite of jurors before being either convicted and sentenced to whatever penalty or penalties the trial judge and the jurors so decide, or even exonerated. I am also quite certain that if this event or incident had occurred in our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, no professionally trained Ghanaian journalist would have rushed to the press with such an overly sensationalized banner news headline. So, the next most logical question to ask here is this: What exactly went wrong here?

My good and credible guess here is that it almost has everything to do with the sort of envy-mixed-with-raw-hatred that has become the lot of “The Burgher,” the “Been-To” or the African- or, in our particular instance, the Ghanaian-born citizen domiciled abroad, especially right here in the United States of America, Canada and the rest of much of the Western World, so-called, who are almost invariably perceived to be living high on the hog or a kind of luxurious life that makes us automatically supercilious and insensitive to the plight of our less economically privileged relatives and friends back home.

And, of course, the second problem with the manner of the general reportage of the Kofi Amankwaa Story back home in Ghana concerned or regarded the clearly deliberate misreading and the misrepresentation of an alleged criminal misconduct which “carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison” to necessarily or strictly mean or imply that there will be absolutely no room for judicial discretion or leniency on both the part of the judge and the jury when it came to the sentencing phase of the Amankwaa Trial. In other words, it is highly likely for a criminally indicted or even a criminally convicted Mr. Amankwaa to be sentenced to, say, two or three years’ imprisonment, instead of the maximum prison sentence of five years allowable by law for the first count of “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.” The same rule or logic applies to the second and final count of “Immigration Fraud,” which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.

Now, the final aspect of this case which nearly all the Ghanaian media portals and websites which carried the Kofi Amankwaa Story blundered on has to do with the very popular concept, at least hereabouts, of “Plea Bargaining,” which simply means that based on certain extenuating circumstances, such as the motive and the general professional practice record of our subject of discussion and how the Amankwaa Case is deemed to facilitate the snagging of other lawyers with similar practice or criminal conduct. Then at the sentencing phase, if it should actually come to that, there are bound to be the introduction of character testimonies from the side of the defense counsel, entailing largely written testimonies of former clients like Yours Truly, who has had himself and a couple of relatives and friends served or assisted by the criminal defendant.

Anyway, as of this writing and press preparation, Yours Truly had spoken to a former legal practice associate of Mr. Amankwaa and had become privy to some “esoteric” or specialized details of the case that he is neither authorized nor inclined to disclose on these digital pages, as they could very well prejudice the outcome of a case that has yet to be officially trialed, especially since the case and the charges so far preferred against Mr. Amankwaa are still under criminal investigation. Plus, the former Amankwaa legal practice associate has already been questioned by State and Federal criminal investigators. He is not associated with the case, having opened his own private practice and professionally parted ways with his former mentor.

So far, the New York State Attorney-Grievance Committee, we learn from the afore-referenced New York Times news report, has received nine complaints from former clients of Lawyer Amankwaa and some of their family members and relatives. As of this writing and press preparation, Yours Truly is reliably informed that Mr. Amankwaa has been granted bail by the court and is at home awaiting the outcome of further investigations and judicial proceedings.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]