Samuel Azu Crabbe

Samuel Azu Crabbe was Chief Justice of Ghana from 1973 to 1977 and later chaired the board that investigated the 1982 murder of three High Court judges. He was born at James Town in Accra on 18 November 1918 and died at Aburi on 15 September 2005.

He was head boy of Accra Academy in 1939, went on to Achimota College and took a law degree at University College London in 1946, being called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1948. A keen sportsman, he captained football, hockey and cricket teams as a student and later twice served as president of the Ghana Olympic Committee.

He became a High Court judge in 1959 and a Supreme Court judge in 1961. After the 1966 coup he chaired the commission that probed Kwame Nkrumah's assets. The Acheampong regime made him Chief Justice in 1973, but the Ghana Bar Association passed a vote of no confidence in him, and in 1977 the government issued a decree that retired him by name. Under the PNDC he chaired the Special Investigation Board into the abduction and killing of three judges and a retired army officer in June 1982. It recommended ten people for prosecution, including PNDC members, and he and his family faced threats while it worked. He wrote Law of Wills in Ghana.