Inside Kenyan court judgments that shaped sentences for femicide convicts
Court gavel. Recent judgments show that aggravating factors, remorse and victim impact statements influence sentencing in femicide cases.
What you need to know:
- Court decisions from Kisumu, Kiambu and Makueni illustrate the principles judges apply when determining punishment for gender-based killings.
- Kenya's Sentencing Policy Guidelines emphasise culpability, victim impact and public protection when determining punishment for femicide and murder offences.
On the morning of July 3, 2023, a 15‑year‑old Form Two student left for school in Kisumu County. In the evening, she walked back with a 19‑year‑old Form Three schoolmate but never made it home.
Her body was discovered on a road near her home in Mbalawandu village. A postmortem revealed she had been stabbed nine times in the neck, her jugular veins severed. In a judgment delivered on December 18, 2024, the High Court in Kisumu sentenced the young man to 50 years in prison for her murder.
The court found that he had attacked her after she refused his attempt to defile her. “He voluntarily stabbed the deceased minor for refusing to be defiled by him,” the judge said.
In arriving at the decision, the judge considered the offender's conduct after the killing to be an aggravating factor, which increases the seriousness of an offence.
The judge said the offender went to school the following day before later pretending to be ill, in what the court found was an attempt to mislead his teachers. The judge added that the behaviour demonstrated a lack of remorse.
While acknowledging the offender's age, the judge concluded that the gravity of the crime outweighed any mitigating factors. “In my view, the convict herein does not deserve to live in society. He is a danger to the girl-child and to any other human being,” the judge said.
“Society must be protected by keeping him away for a longer period of time for the victim’s family to heal, although their daughter will never be brought back to life by whatever sentence this court may impose on the convict.”
Sadistic killing
In Kiambu, a 24-year-old woman was abducted outside her apartment on January 24, 2018, by, among others, the man she had once called her husband.
According to the High Court in Kiambu, she was driven for about 15 minutes to Magumoini, off Kiambu-Ruiru Road, where she was verbally assaulted, sexually assaulted by one of her attackers and then doused with sulphuric acid. She was left for dead and died in hospital the following day.
In a judgment delivered on April 12, 2024, the High Court sentenced the three accused – including the man she had once called her husband, a woman and another man – to 30 years' imprisonment each for her murder.
The judge also reflected on the limits of sentencing in murder cases, noting, “The sentence in a murder case is not, and can never be a measure of the value put on the life of the victim. To insinuate otherwise would be profoundly disrespectful to human life and to the deceased.”
In determining the sentence, the court said it had considered the purposes of punishment, including deterring similar crimes, denouncing the offenders’ conduct, protecting the community and following the Kenya Judiciary Sentencing Guidelines.
The judge found that the aggravating factors far outweighed any mitigating circumstances. He described the killing as “an extreme act of domestic violence and femicide” carried out “in the most brutish and sadistic of ways”.
The judgement concluded, “the circumstances here call for a very stiff sentence to match the ruthlessness of the murder and its effect on the victims and society.
“Looking at the evidence in totality, I have been unable to assign a higher or lesser degree of culpability to any of the three accused persons. I sentence each of the three accused persons to 30 years’ imprisonment.”
Remorse
In Makueni, on June 9, 2025, the High Court sentenced a man to 30 years' imprisonment for the rape and murder of a 21-year-old woman. However, the court ordered that the sentence run from February 3, 2017, taking into account the period he had spent in pre-trial custody.
During mitigation, the defence counsel told the court that the accused regretted the acts that led to the young woman's death and that he was married with one child and had spent seven years in custody.
The court also heard that he had completed several training programmes in prison and had “changed” and was now “a good citizen”. His lawyer urged the court to treat the time spent in pre-trial custody as sufficient punishment.
In sentencing, the judge said the court had carefully considered the probation and aftercare services pre-sentence report and the mitigation presented by the defence, as well as the aggravating and mitigating factors.
Despite the mitigation, the court found that the seriousness of raping and murdering the 21-year-old woman warranted a custodial sentence and ordered that the offender serve 30 years' imprisonment.
“In this case a young woman was raped, then killed. Her family remains traumatised to date. Her death adds to the number of women killed through SGBV (Sexual and Gender-Based Violence),” the judge observed.
Victim statement
The Sentencing Policy Guidelines (2023) state that the harm caused by murder is immeasurable.
“The sentence is not a measure of the value placed on the life of the victim. Therefore, the assessment of aggravating and mitigating features relating to the offence focuses on culpability,” the guidelines state.
The guidelines also provide that a victim’s family may make a statement to the court about the impact of the offence.
Such victim impact statements are provided for under the Victim Protection Act, 2014, which states that “the statement may be considered by the court in determining the sentence of the offender.”
