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Court of Appeal quashes murder verdict against couple
What you need to know:
- The judges faulted the High Court judge for determining the case based on circumstantial evidence and relying entirely on dog-tracking the suspects without any other corroborating evidence.
Court of Appeal has ordered the immediate release from prison of a couple that was serving a 25-year jail term after they were convicted of murder.
The three-member panel led by Deputy Chief Justice, Richard Buteera overturned a High Court judgment in which Jonathan Mazuku and his wife, Justine Mpamulungi had been jailed for 25 years for the murder of one Jennifer Namuwonge.
Other justices were Christopher Gashirabake and Oscar Kihika.
The judges faulted the High Court judge for determining the case based on circumstantial evidence and relying entirely on dog-tracking the suspects without any other corroborating evidence.
They said that the trial High Court judge totally misconstrued the evidence because the witnesses said that the soil on the skirt from the accused’s house and that on the shoes were not conclusively a perfect match to the ground from the scene, but the judge held there was an ideal match.
“Yet it was on that basis that he convicted the appellants. That was misdirection on the part of the learned Judge. The evidence of prosecution witness seven (PW7), if anything, was clearly inconclusive as to the issue of whether the soil found on the appellants' skirt and shoes matched that of the crime scene, and could therefore not be relied upon as corroborative to that of the sniffer dog,” the judges held.
According to the court record, Mazuku and his wife, Mpamulungi had been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for the murder of one Namuwonge who, based on the post-mortem report died due to strangulation.
The court observed that the manner of Namuwonge’s death pointed to the fact that her demise was actuated by malice aforethought.
In the appeal, the two duo challenged their participation in the killing of the deceased.
Background
Records show that on August 16, 2O17 at St Francis zone, Kawempe Division, a dead body was found dumped in a rubbish heap which prompted the local council leaders to call the Police at Bwaise and Kawempe to go to the scene with sniffer dogs.
The court heard that the sniffer dog was given access to the crime scene whereupon it commenced tracking the scents which led to Katogo Zone before it entered the house of the duo leading to the arrest.
But the Court held that the evidence of the dog handler, could not, on its own, sustain a conviction of the man and his wife without corroborating evidence.
"Although the learned trial judge may not have cautioned himself about reliance on the canine evidence before him, he nonetheless acknowledged the fact that the prosecution relied entirely on circumstantial evidence and that it needed to be corroborated. It is therefore necessary, as a first appellate court, to re-appraise what the learned trial judge considered as corroborating evidence to that of the sniffer dog,” the court ruled.
