By URN<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal in Kampala has overturned a 35-year sentence for a man convicted of murdering his wife.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Ayebare Eric\u00a0for burning to death his wife Zawede Faridah even after establishing that the evidence of file wasn\u2019t beyond reasonable doubt.\u00a0\u201cApart from the absence of any evidence to corroborate the ‘dying declaration’ the learned\u00a0judge\u00a0had described at some\u00a0stage the\u00a0appellant’s version of events as ‘appears very credible’. The burden\u00a0of\u00a0proof\u00a0is always on the prosecution and the standard of proof is proof beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n
They added, “If an accused in his defence provides a\u00a0probable\u00a0version of events to contradict the prosecution version\u00a0of the\u00a0case,\u00a0this would suggest that the prosecution has failed to prove its\u00a0case\u00a0beyond reasonable doubt. The defence would have succeeded in creating sufficient doubt in the prosecution’s case\u2026 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,\u201d the judgement reads in part.<\/p>\n
Consequently, the justices ruled that Ayebare who had been in prison since 2015 should immediately be released.\u00a0\u00a0According to court records, Ayebare\u00a0was convicted of the murder of his wife\u00a0in 2018.<\/p>\n
The record shows that on\u00a0October\u00a028\u00a02015 at Kiyanja zone, Nabbingo in Wakiso district, with malice aforethought,\u00a0Ayebare\u00a0set fire to Zawede thereby causing her death\u00a0two days later.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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;\u00a0the learned trial\u00a0judge\u00a0erred in law and fact when she convicted\u00a0him\u00a0of murder\u00a0based on hearsay evidence, thus causing a travesty of\u00a0justice; the\u00a0judge\u00a0erred in law and fact when she overlooked the appellant’s defence of intoxication\u00a0and that she\u00a0imposed\u00a0a manifestly excessive sentence of 35 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0Ayebare Eric\u00a0for burning to death his wife Zawede […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7730,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions\/7730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spicemedia.ug\/spicefm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}