By URN
The Court of Appeal in Kampala has overturned a 35-year sentence for a man convicted of murdering his wife.
In a judgement of three Justices; Fredrick Egonda Ntende, Barishaki Cheborion and Dr Asa Mugenyi, the court held that the trial judge Elizabeth Jane Alividza wrongly convicted Ayebare Eric for burning to death his wife Zawede Faridah even after establishing that the evidence of file wasn’t beyond reasonable doubt. “Apart from the absence of any evidence to corroborate the ‘dying declaration’ the learned judge had described at some stage the appellant’s version of events as ‘appears very credible’. The burden of proof is always on the prosecution and the standard of proof is proof beyond reasonable doubt.
They added, “If an accused in his defence provides a probable version of events to contradict the prosecution version of the case, this would suggest that the prosecution has failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The defence would have succeeded in creating sufficient doubt in the prosecution’s case… Much as it may be questionable whether the threshold for qualiffing that evidence as a dying declaration was reached there is no evidence to corroborate the same. In those circumstances we are satisfied that the prosecution did not discharge its burden to prove the case against the appellant beyond reasonable doubt,” the judgement reads in part.
Consequently, the justices ruled that Ayebare who had been in prison since 2015 should immediately be released. According to court records, Ayebare was convicted of the murder of his wife in 2018.
The record shows that on October 28 2015 at Kiyanja zone, Nabbingo in Wakiso district, with malice aforethought, Ayebare set fire to Zawede thereby causing her death two days later.
In a court session in Mpigi district in 2017, Judge Alividza heard the case and gave her judgment in which she found Ayebare guilty of the murder of Zawede.
She then sentenced him to 35 years in prison. Dissatisfied with both the conviction and sentence, Ayebare appealed to the Court of Appeal on three grounds; the learned trial judge erred in law and fact when she convicted him of murder based on hearsay evidence, thus causing a travesty of justice; the judge erred in law and fact when she overlooked the appellant’s defence of intoxication and that she imposed a manifestly excessive sentence of 35 years.
