Under the Nigerian law, one of the fundamental rights Constitutionally recognized is the right to life. That right, as important as it is, is not absolute. Meaning that one’s right could still be legally tempered with under the circumstances enumerated in section 33 (2) (b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. One of the circumstances accommodated by the provision is killing as a result of use of reasonable force to prevent escape from lawful arrest or detention. In the case at hand, the attention of the Supreme Court was drawn to the provision of Section 271 of the Criminal Code, which substantially has the same effect with section 33 (2) of the Constitution by the Respondent’s counsel, the Hon. Attorney-General of Ogun State. The Court, allowed the appeal, in part, by setting aside the concurrent decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal that convicted the Appellant for Murder and sentenced him to death by hanging pursuant to the provision of section 319 of the Criminal Code Law of Ogun State. The Court substituted the conviction and with that of Manslaughter and replaced the sentence with that of 10 years imprisonment with hard labour. However, what is disturbing about the Court’s decision in this case is the fact that even though the Court held that the force used by the convict was not reasonable enough to be accommodated by the provision of section 33 (2) of the Constitution, in addition to upholding the concurrent decision of the trial court and that of the Court of Appeal that the defences of accident and self-defence were not available to the Appellant, the Court went ahead and substituted both the conviction and sentence. It is the view of this paper that the intervention of the Supreme Court was uncalled for and not justifiable under the law. The paper recommends that the Court, if faced with similar situation in future, should decide otherwise.