| dc.description.abstract | The above sentiment was a defence lawyer ' s
response to a press interview upon winning a
sensational murder case in which a Permanent
Secretary had been found brutally killed in a fire
inferno. His wife was charged with starting the
fire . She was convicted of murder and sentenced
to the mandatory death sentence by the High
Court, but the Court of Appeal quashed the
conviction. The grounds of suspicion and
circumstantial evidence were the only means
which the High Court used to determine that the
accused had a strong motive for killing her
husband. The Court of Appeal found that the
circumstantial evidence relied on by the High
Court was not sufficient to condemn the accused person he recent past has seen some very critical
utterances being levelled against the
investigative and prosecutorial agencies of the
Republic of Kenya by the judiciary, owing to the
cavalier manner in which these agencies h a ve
handled criminal cases . In Republic v. David
Manyara Njuki and Twelve Others, the thirteen
accused persons were facing ten counts of
murder under Section 203 as read with Section
204 of the Penal Code, Cap. 63 of the Laws of
Kenya. The trial judge, in declaring that the
accused persons had no case to answer at the
close of the prosecution case, criticised the
police for relying on the evidence of an
informant without attempting to verifv its
acc uracy . "It is incumbent upon the police to
ver~fy the truth and accuracy of the information
:'hich they allegedly received from their
informer_ but they do not seem to have carried
..,, . out '.:!F.ly independent investigation s at all. .. | en_US |
