Nyangasi sentence reduced

Appeal 
The lawyer also contended that the Justices of the Court of Appeal, while sentencing Nyangasi, did not take into consideration the time he had spent on remand. The Supreme Court, in an earlier case, had ruled that time spent on remand must be deducted from the final sentence, in accordance with the Constitution of Uganda.

The law also gives powers to the Supreme Court to either acquit or pass a new sentence on an appellant that it considers appropriate. The lawyer prayed to the Supreme Court to set aside the conviction upheld, and sentence given to Nyangasi by the Court of Appeal.

The law 
Not so, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions responded. To the DPP the law is clear; an appellant cannot appeal against the severity of his or her sentence. The Supreme Court had also ruled in several cases that appellate court should only interfere with the discretion of the trial court where it ignored an important matter or circumstance that ought to have been considered when passing sentence. 

The DPP conceded that the Justices of the Court of Appeal did not deduct the time that Nyangasi spend on remand when sentencing him to 25 years’ of imprisonment. The DPP, however, contended that this did not render the decision illegal, harsh or excessive given that the maximum sentence for murder is death. 

Precedence 
Two cases were cited to bolster this position; the case of Aharikundira Yusitina who was sentenced to 30 years for the murder of a spouse and that of Akbar Hussein Godi who was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment for the murder of his wife. In both cases the Supreme Court did not consider these sentences illegal.

The Supreme Court considered the issue raised by Nyangasi’s lawyer on the severity of the sentence given to him by the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court agreed with the position of the law, as pointed out by the DPP, that the severity of a sentence cannot be a ground of appeal in a second appeal. To the Supreme Court the correct ground of appeal in this matter was whether the Justices of the Court of Appeal took into consideration the time that Nyangasi had spent on remand. 

Sentence an illegality 
The Supreme Court ruled that the decision of the Court of Appeal in this matter fell short of the requirement for consideration of the period spend on remand in the judgment, as provided for under the Constitution. This therefore rendered the sentence an illegality.

The Supreme Court accordingly nullified the sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal and set aside the illegal sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment imposed on Nyangasi.

The first two grounds of Nyangasi’s appeal were merged into one ground which was whether the Court of Appeal rightly held that the trial judge was right to reject Nyangasi’s alibi and base the conviction of murder on the evidence of the two key witnesses of fact who were present in the homestead of Nyangasi when his wife died. The Justices of the Court of Appeal analysed the evidence of these two witnesses and believed them. They concluded that Nyangasi’s defence of alibi had been sufficiently countered by the evidence of these two witnesses. 

Unreliable witnesses  
The Supreme Court noted that the judges of the Court of Appeal were alive to some of the inconsistencies in the evidence of one of the witnesses but immediately addressed them.

It was then clear that the Court of Appeal did not base its decision only on the evidence of one witness but relied on the evidence of the second witness to resolve the inconsistencies, after evaluation and analysis of both pieces of evidence. The Supreme Court concurred with the Court of Appeal that the inconsistencies cited did not go to the root of the evidence. For this reason, the Supreme Court ruled that the first two grounds of the appeal had failed. 

New sentence 
It is, however, within the powers of the Supreme Court, as provided by law, to impose a new sentence on an appellant. Court evaluated both the mitigating and aggravating factors that were raised during the initial sentencing, including the fact that Nyangasi was a first offender. Court observed that Nyangasi’s lawyer and the DPP did not help court to establish the amount of time Nyangasi spent on remand. Court, therefore, had to go the extra mile to establish the actual time Nyangasi spend on remand.

Judgment in the High Court was delivered on October 19, 2012, and sentencing was on October 24, 2012, according to the court records. The available information to the Supreme Court was that Nyangasi was remanded on December 11, 2010. The time spent on remand was therefore from December 11, 2010 to October 24, 2012. This added up to one year and 10 months when Nyangasi was on remand. 

The Supreme Court imposed a new sentence of 26 years imprisonment on Nyangasi, which to the court was appropriate under the circumstances. The court, in line with the law, arithmetically deducted one year and 10 months that Nyangasi spent on remand from the sentence of 26 years. Court ruled that Nyangasi would therefore serve a period of 24 years and 2 months’ imprisonment running from the date of conviction.

To be continued...