IBRAHIM ALI V. REPUBLIC

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

Upon being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by the High Court at Malindi (Meoli, J.) for the offence of murder, the appellant brings this first appeal challenging both his conviction and sentence. He contends, in the main, that the learned judge erred by relying on circumstantial evidence that did not exclusively point to him as the perpetrator of the offence, by relying on unsafe evidence of identification, and by convicting him on the basis of a postmortem report for one Justin Kambi Balosi instead of that of the person he was alleged to have murdered, Isaiah Mwangangi Mulelya (the deceased).

It is common ground that the evidence led by the prosecution against the appellant was purely circumstantial. None of the prosecution witnesses saw the appellant inflict the injuries from which the deceased died. The gist of the prosecution evidence was as follows. The appellant and the deceased were brothers-in-law and their relationship was fairly cordial. On 2…