The Court of Appeal has upheld a life sentence imposed on a rapist who sexually assaulted two orphaned sisters 11 years ago.
Appellate Judges John Mativo, Mwaniki Gachoka and Weldon Korir ordered Eliud Oenga Giteli to serve life imprisonment for defiling and indecently assaulting the two sisters (RM. and CW), aged 9 and 15 in 2014.
The three-judge bench ruled that Giteli who had lost his first appeal heard by High Court Judge Lady Justice Roselyn Veronicah Wendoh in 2019 was guilty as charged.
In her judgment, Justice Wendoh ruled that the trial magistrate had properly analysed the testimony presented by the Director of Public Prosecution.
She ruled that the rapist was properly tried and that the trial magistrate did not err in law or fact in arriving at the sentence. She upheld the lower court’s conviction and sentence.
Dissatisfied with the High Court decision, Giteli filed a second appeal where he urged the three-judge bench to overturn the conviction and sentence from the two lower courts, arguing that Justice Wendoh should have exercised her discretion in his favor and reduced what he termed as “a harsh, punitive sentence.”
Judges Mativo, Gachoka and Korir said Justice Wendoh properly addressed the law and facts when she “concurred with the Nyahururu magistrate who tried and convicted the appellant (Giteli).”
The judges noted, “Both courts confirmed from the medical records coupled with P-3 forms, treatment cards, and health cards that the complainants had been sexually assaulted by a person they knew very well.”
The three judges ruled that both courts had also affirmed that the assailant was well known to the complainants.
“Giteli was recognised as a friend to their uncle and used to visit him. They were living together with their uncle and their grandparents following the death of their mother,” the judges stated.
The judges noted that Giteli used to sneak into the house where the sisters were sleeping and sexually assaulted them in turns.
They stated that the girls were living with their grandparents who were “not keen on taking care of them.”
“The evidence of the complainants was truthful and in compliance with Section 124 of the Evidence Act,” ruled the appeal judges after analysing the evidence in both the magistrate’s court and the High Court.
“In view of the foregoing, we find that the appeal against the conviction lacks merit and is hereby dismissed,” ruled Judges Mativo, Gachoka, and Korir, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Nakuru on June 20, 2025.
In their evidence before the magistrate, the complainants recalled that Giteli had threatened to kill them if they disclosed what he did to them.
Before defiling them, he would rudely display his manhood to them as if he were performing a ritual.
