When rogue police, judicial officers collude to beat justice
Monica Kagia
Cases of armed police officers entrusted with maintaining law and order engaging in wanton shooting and subsequent killing of colleagues and innocent civilians have been on the increase.
And the question on the minds of many is; can they trust the officers to keep them safe?
The tragedy is that many of the rogue officers never been held responsible for their crimes leaving families of victims crying for justice.
Only a few such as Harrison Langat Kipng’etich are ever held to account for their actions.
Even then, what happens in the course of the “probes” is often deliberate cover up attempts that end up in miscarriage of justice.
In Kipng’etich’s case, he was accused of killing a colleague and two civilians at the then Mtwapa Police Post, now Mtwapa Police Station.
On the fateful day, March 16, 2003, he is said to have walked to his work station and indiscriminately opened fire at police and civilians who had gone to seek services at the reporting desk.
Reconstruct file
And when the burst of gunfire fell silent, the bodies of police constable Jacob Nderi, and civilians Dorine Wawira Mwaniki and Alice Gatonyi lay lifeless.
The police post resembled a scene from hell; bloody with ripped off furniture, spent bullet cartridges and smell of gunpowder.
Kipng’etich was overpowered and arrested—and was later arraigned for murder. But what has remained a puzzle is how the charge was reduced to manslaughter.
The accused was released on a Sh500,000 bond and three witnesses managed to testify before the accused absconded court and the file vanished.
For 12 years, the file could not be traced until in November 2015 when Kipng’etich was re-arrested and the file reconstructed.
When he appeared before the then trial magistrate Diana Mochache, all he asked for was to have his matter proceed from where they had left in 2003.
But what really happened? According to court officials familiar with the proceedings then, a prosecutor who was reportedly notorious for brokering deals on behalf of accused persons at the court, might have had a hand in helping Kipng’etich escape facing justice.
The rogue prosecutor, who was transferred to another station where he was soon sacked over misappropriation of funds in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, is said to have reduced Kipng’etich’s murder charge to manslaughter.
Reduce charge
This helped the accused to escape justice after being freed on bail.
When the trial reopened, State prosecutor Erick Masila told the court that the accused’s file had gone missing a few weeks after he was released on bail. He blamed the police for failing to enforce a warrant of arrest by the court leading to stalling of the case for 12 years.
The manslaughter trial was halted midway and murder charges reinstated.
As per the law, the maximum sentence for manslaughter is between 10 to 15 years, meaning the accused would have served a lesser sentence, his heinous crime notwithstanding.
According to Senior State Counsel Alexander Muteti, the move to reduce the charge was an outright misconduct by the prosecutor who was in charge.
For a murder charge to be reduced to manslaughter, Senior State Counsel Alloys Kemo says, a plea bargain ought to have occurred.
In this case, Kemo adds that “there must be evidence to prove the plea bargainer did not intend to commit the murder in question.”
However, the circumstances in the Kipng’etich case did not warrant the prosecution to proffer a lesser charge of manslaughter. The case is a classic example of just how rogue police officers and prosecutors collude to escape justice.
And for the bereaved families whose kins’ lives were ruthlessly snuffed out by the officer, had to wait for 16 years for justice to be served.
In a judgment delivered by Lady Justice Dora Chepkwony on November 12, 2019, Kipng’etich was sentenced to life imprisonment after he was found culpable of murdering his colleague constable Nderi and two civilians Wawira and Gatonyi.
The case was revived after the father of one the victims wrote to the DPP to complain about the delay in determining it. After tracing of the file, Kipng’etich, who had been on the run, was arrested in Uganda and brought back to Kenya to face justice.
“It was during one of the mentions that chief magistrate Rosemary Mutoka also looked into the file and advised that the matter be reinstated to murder and the process began,” said Muteti.
