High Court upholds 15-year jail term for Tharaka Nithi chief and village elder convicted of manslaughter

The High Court has upheld a 15-year prison sentence for an assistant chief and village elder convicted of manslaughter.

The former assistant chief of Ibote, Mutegi Mauki in Tharaka Nithi and his village elder, Moses Mutharaka, were found guilty by the Chuka Magistrate Court in December last year of beating Peter Mutiria, a retired teacher from Kithunguri causing head injuries that led to his death.

The court heard that the two arrested the deceased at his home after finding him with a three-litre container of illicit brew, tied his hands with a rope and beat him with blunt objects causing bleeding in his brain.

In their appeal, the two argued that the evidence considered by the lower court in reaching its verdict was full of discrepancies and could not be justified.

They also argued that some of the people whom the investigating officer claimed to have seen beating the deceased were not produced in court or named, and that the 15-year sentence was harsh.

They also claimed that the deceased died as a result of an injury he sustained after an ambulance took him to Chuka County Referral Hospital where he had been referred from Marimanti Level Four Hospital for a CT scan.

But judge Lucy Gitari said the court had indeed found that the two had severely assaulted the deceased at his home, where he started bleeding from the nose and suffered convulsions.

She noted that a post-mortem examination also showed that Mutiria died as a result of extensive internal bleeding on the left side of his brain and not from a bruise on his forehead sustained in the ambulance accident.

The prosecution had asked the High Court to increase the sentence to life imprisonment, but the judge said the sentence was appropriate. 

She said that although the two claimed they were on duty when the crime was committed, the death could have been avoided if they had acted within the law.

"The appeal lacks merit and is hereby dismissed and the judgement of the magistrate court is upheld," Ms Gitari said. J

The judge said the nine people accused of killing Kamaindi chief Japheth Mayau Mukengu in June 2020 will be sentenced on September 21, 2023.

The chief's killing also led to the hacking to death of Chuka OCS Joseph Kinyua at Ugweri market in neighbouring Embu County while chasing the chief's killers.