 |
| Over time, the court has decided on a number of high-profile cases. In a series, Saturday Vision looks back at some of the attention-grabbing cases that visited the court room.
By Anne Mugisa
Hers is probably one of the earliest cases of ritual murder victims that made its way to the Court. This was in the 1990s. The mutilated body parts of the five-year-old girl were exhumed from different places where one of her killers took the Police.
On April 4, 1999, early in the morning, a neighbour, Florence Nakalema, saw the little girl in the company of a man going towards Kayunga Road in Mukono. The girl had been at home by the mother.
After some time, the girl’s mother came, inquiring from Nakalema if she had seen her daughter. Nakalema told her about the man she saw leading her away. The matter was reported to the LC officials and later to Njeru Police Post. A search was mounted for both the girl and the man who was seen with her.
At about 3:00pm that day, the man was arrested, but he denied knowledge of the child or its whereabouts.
However, the next day, the suspect revealed that the child was at the home of Yunus Samanya, a witchdoctor. The Police stormed Samanya’s home where they also found a one Gloria Nagadya. They arrested both.
On April 6, 1999, the man who had been seen walking with the child led the Police to two locations in Naminya village, where the remains of the child were recovered. A post mortem examination revealed that the child had been slaughtered. The neck, the right thumb and the right second finger, private parts and tongue were missing.
That same day the man, Francis Mwanga, confessed to the Police to having sacrificed the child. However, later, during the trial he tried to deny the confession.
THE TRIAL
During the trial, the Court heard that Francis Mwanga had the child sacrificed in a cleansing ritual against evil spirits. He had been given sh1m to find a child for sacrifice and the five-year-old girl became his victim.
The court heard that on the fateful day, Mwanga delivered the child to the witchdoctor and she was sacrificed. This was contained in Mwanga’s statement to the Police.
In an attempt to shake the case off him, Mwanga’s lawyers submitted to the court that the Police framed him and that he never led them to the locations where the child’s remains were found. The lawyer said that instead, it was the Police who knew these locations beforehand and they led the suspect there, before framing him. He said his client never made the confession, but rather, the statement was concocted by the Police to frame him. Samanya and Nagadya also denied involvement in the murder.
But the judge who tried the three in the High Court rejected this story. He ruled that Mwanga duly made the damning statement and it was a true statement. In the statement, Mwanga stated that he had been promised sh1m if he brought a child for sacrifice. He added that he took the child and handed her over to the witchdoctor.
On July 23, 1999, the High Court, sitting in Jinja, convicted Francis Mwanga, Yunus Samanya and Gloria Nagadya and sentenced them to death for the child’s murder. Though it was no consolation, at least justice had been done as far as the bereaved family was concerned.
THE COURT OF APPEAL
The three convicts went to the Court of Appeal to have the High Court decision overturned. Samanya and Nagadya were successful, but Mwanga’s conviction and sentence were upheld. On that day April 11, 2003, the Court of Appeal threw out the confession made by Mwanga as inadmissible.
According to the Court, this is because, the trial Judge did not inquire from Mwanga whether that confession was voluntarily made or not.
Having ruled that, the Justices of Appeal, G.M. Okello, C.N.B. Kitumba and C. B. Byamugisha, however, decided that there were other pieces of evidence that incriminated Mwanga. The first one was that Mwanga had been seen taking the child away in the direction of Kayunga Road, in the morning, which he never denied at the trial, though he had said he left the child playing with other children.
The second set of evidence was the discovery of the child’s remains at the locations pointed out by Mwanga. According to the justices, despite claims of torture and framing by the Police, it was curious that the child’s remains were exhumed in the exact places pointed out by Mwanga. They ruled that it was Mwanga who led them to the remains and not the other way round. He, therefore, was responsible for the child’s murder, according to the Court of Appeal.
SUPREME COURT
At the Supreme Court, Mwanga’s lawyer sought to fault the decision of the Court of Appeal. He said the Appeal judges wrongly decided that the High Court was right to say Mwanga led the Police to the locations where the child’s remains were found. He insisted it was the Police who led him there. He said the judges failed to evaluate evidence and wrongly upheld the High Court judgment that Mwanga participated in the murder. The lawyer also blamed the Court of Appeal, saying it never gave Mwanga chance to argue his case to mitigate the death sentence.
In their judgment, the five Justices of the Supreme Court agreed with their colleagues in the Court of Appeal on the statement made by Mwanga. They also agreed with the lower court’s decision that despite the inadmissibility of the confession statement, there was still damning evidence against Mwanga. The witness who saw him take the child away and his leading the Police to the exact spots where his victim’s remains were found.
“Although the appellant claimed in his defence that he was tortured by Police, it is inconceivable that he could lead the Police to the two locations where the remains of the deceased had been buried if he never knew those locations. We find no merit in the appeal against the conviction. It is, accordingly, dismissed,” A. Oder, J. Tsekooko A. Karokora, J. Mulenga and G. Kanyeihamba ruled, sealing Mwanga’s fate on December 21, 2005.
The Court, however, said they will wait to give their verdict on whether Mwanga should be put to death, until the ruling on the constitutionality of the death sentence. An appeal had been lodged in the same court and last year, the court ruled that the death sentence was constitutional, only that the trial judge had the discretion to impose it, depending on the circumstances of the offence.
Case highlights
- Francis Mwanga pounced on a child whose mother had left to keep guard at home, only to take her to a witchdoctor to be sacrificed
- After confessing to committing the crime in a statement at the Police, Mwanga later denied it in court
- After failing to defend themselves, with his other two two accomplices, they were sentenced to death for the child’s murder
lIn the Court of Appeal, Mwanga’s accomplices were let off the hook while his sentence was upheld |
