By FAUSTINE KAPAMA-Judiciary
FOUR criminals, Muganyizi Michael, Magige Marwa, alias
Tatoo, Abdallah Petro, alias Amos Ndayi and Abdulrahman Athuman, who were
involved in the killing of former Mwanza Regional Police Commander (RPC)
Liberatus Barlow, are to be hanged to death.
This followed the decision of the Court of Appeal, the
country’s highest temple of justice in the country, to dismiss in its entirety
the appeal under which the four appellants had lodged in attempt to challenge
the findings and verdict given by the High Court at Mwanza.
“From the totality of the prosecution account drawn
from the confessional statements of the appellants as corroborated with the
fingerprint evidence, the charge against (them) was proved to the hilt,”
Justices Mwanaisha Kwariko, Mary Levira and Abraham Mwampashi ruled.
They added, “The appellants' defence is not at all
compatible with their innocence. Thus, we find no reason to fault the trial
court's finding on this. In the final analysis, the appeal therefore fails and
it is accordingly hereby dismissed in its entirety.”
During hearing of the appeal, the appellants had
contended, among others, that the conviction and sentence was wrongly based on
unlawful inconclusive and uncorroborated evidence of visual identification,
confession statements and that of fingerprints profile test.
In their judgment delivered recently, the justices
found the evidence of visual identification by the wife of the deceased was
weak, unreliable and not watertight, ought not to have been acted upon by the
trial court in convicting the appellants since the incidence took place at
night.
They were, however, quick to point out that the first
three appellants, that is, Michael, Marwa and Petro confessed in their
cautioned statements to have been involved in the fateful incident in which the
deceased was killed.
The justices noted that in his detailed cautioned
statement, Michael confessed to have shot the deceased, while Marwa gave
account in his statement on what happened on the fateful night to the day he
was arrested.
Marwa also confessed to have participated in invading
and surrounding the deceased car and that he saw Michael shooting the deceased
at point-blank range to his death.
On his part, the justices noted, Petro also confessed
to have been among the bandits who invaded and murdered the deceased and, in
his statement, he named and implicated Athuman and Michael, whom he claims is
his brother.
“In conclusion on the appellants' cautioned
statements, we have thoroughly passed through them and observed that the said
three appellants gave account in detail on what transpired on the fateful night
to the time they were arrested,” they said.
According to the justices, the appellants explained
the role each of them played and some of the details given by the appellants in
their respective cautioned statements could not be given by any other person
but by the appellants themselves.
“From what we have observed we are satisfied that, as
rightly found by the trial court, the statements contained nothing but the
truth,” they said.
The justices further observed that, in the cautioned
statements by Michael, Marwa and Petro, it was not only the accounts of how and
why the deceased was murdered which was given, but in the statements, all the
ingredients of the offence of murder were also established.
The appellants stated in their respective cautioned
statements that in the fateful night they had been on the robbery spree where
they invaded and committed robbery at different places including a certain bar
at Pasiansi Kiseke area, a kiosk at Lumala and a bar or supermarket of Mama
Mzungu.
Thereafter, they went and settled at Kitangiri
cemetery for dividing among themselves the loot. From the cemetery they again
entered in the streets and that is when they encountered the deceased who was
in the company of a woman in his car parked in front of the gate of the house.
The appellants regarded the encounter as another
robbery spree opportunity. They therefore invaded and surrounded the car and
started by accusing the deceased of beaming and blinding them by his car
headlights.
When asked by the deceased to introduce themselves,
the appellants said they were police officers. The deceased who by then was the
incumbent Mwanza RPC, realized that the appellants were not police officers.
He rebuked them and it was when he bent down looking
like he was picking something under the car seat when Michael shot him in the
neck.
Regarding Athuman's conviction, the justices found
that the trial court rightly acted on the confession by Petro which also
implicated him to find his guilty after the same has been corroborated by the
fingerprints evidence.
There was an attempt by appellants’ counsel to
challenge the fingerprints evidence, questioning the competence of witnesses
who collected such evidence from deceased car. In their findings, however, the
justices found such evidence reliable as placed the appellants at the scene of
the killing incident.
They also dismissed the complaint by appellants that
such evidence was tempered with and the chain of custody was broken. The
justices pointed out that the nature and the uniqueness of the relevant
exhibit, that is, fingerprints, makes it very impossible to even think that it
could be tampered with.
“No two persons including twins have ever been found
to have same fingerprints. It is also scientifically proven that fingerprints vary
between one's own fingers. The friction ridges which create fingerprints are
formed while inside the womb and grow proportionally as the baby grows,” they
said.
Hakuna maoni:
Chapisha Maoni