TZW
The convict, alias Mangleza Chanzi, had lodged to fault the findings of the High Court and that of the lower trial court. Justices Mbarouk Mbarouk, Richard Mzilay and Jacobs Mwambegele ruled that the appeal lodged by the appellant against his conviction of unnatural offence lacked merits.
During the trial before the lower court, the appellant had pleaded guilty to the charge of sodomy before he was sentenced to the mandatory life sentence in prison. In his appeal, the appellant contended, among others, that the trial, first and appellate courts erred in lawand facts in convicting him based on an equivocal plea and that the two courts did not warn themselves that his cautioned statement was wrongly admitted as evidence.
However, in the recently delivered judgment, the justices agreed with the submissions by the prosecution that the plea entered by the appellant after the charge was read and explained to him on his first arraignment was unequivocal. After the petitioner admitted to the charge, they noted, the court entered the plea of guilty and called upon the prosecution to adduce the facts constituting the offence.
“The prosecution adduced the facts of the case to which the appellant admitted as true and correct and signed against them,” the observed. The justices further pointed out that the court found the appellant guilty as charged and convicted him of the offence accordingly.
After the conviction, they further noted, the prosecution tendered the cautioned statement and PF3 of the victim to which the appellant had no objection. “After mitigation, the court sentenced him to the mandatory life sentence in prison. We wish to reiterate that under normal circumstances in terms of section 360 of the CPA (Criminal Procedure Act) no appeal against conviction is allowed by law on accused person’s plea of guilty,” they said.
Referring to some decided cases, the justices recalled that there some exceptional instances where an accused person could appeal against the conviction on his own plea of guilty. Such circumstances include whether the plea was imperfect, ambiguous or unfinished.
Other grounds include when the accused plead guilty as a result of mistake or misapprehension, the charge laid down at his door disclosed no offence known to law and upon the admitted facts he could not in law have been convicted of the offence charged.
“The appellant’s plea in the case does not fall within any of the circumstances. We are satisfied that after the court convicted the appellant on his own plea of guilty, the facts comprising every constituent of the charge were explained to him and that he admitted every such constituent,” they said. Therefore, they ruled, the appellant appeal against conviction was misplaced.
The justices further found too cheap to buy his episodes he was concocting at the eleventh hour that he could read but not write or that the facts were not read to him or he was in bad blood with the victim’s mother.