A convict who was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of defiling a minor has been freed.
The 38-year-old man was freed following a successful appeal of his conviction.
Eldoret Senior Principal Magistrate Harrison Barsa previously found him guilty of the crime he allegedly committed on December 2, 2013, in Keiyo South, Elgeyo Marakwet County. The magistrate then handed convicted him to jail term on February 11, 2019.
A day after his conviction, Koech reportedly filed an appeal challenging the magistrate’s ruling claiming that it was based on contradictory and scanty evidence. Koech argued that the evidence that was leveled against him didn’t attain the statutory ingredients of defilement nor prove the charge.
According to him, the prosecutors did not carry out investigations to determine if he committed the crime. He also accused the trial magistrate of impartiality and noted that she gave a harsh sentence.
“Investigations were not conducted as the trial court shifted the burden of proof to the defense. The evidence is scanty, inconsistent, and the trial court was impartial in its ruling. The evidence in court does not prove the offense and the medical evidence does not link the appellant to the offense,” Koech said in his appeal.
During the first sentencing, the minor told the court that she was collecting firewood in a nearby forest at around 4 in the evening when KOech emerged, covered her mouth, and defiled her.
She further told the court that Koech threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone about what happened defilement. And her mother only learned of her ordeal through a neighbor.
The court was also informed that Koech had disappeared for three years after, until 2016, when he was arrested and charged in court. The accused, however, denied claims that he disappeared noting that, at the time of his arrested, the police found him grazing his cattle.
The court also established that the minor was 12 years old and not 10 as earlier claimed in the charge sheet
Koech also pointed out that the complainant lied about the occurrence of the alleged crime. He noted that the complainant claimed that the case was reported in 2013 contrary to the date recorded in the police’s Occurrence Book that notes that the case was recorded in 2016.
While freeing Koech, Justice Hellen Omondi noted that there were some inconsistencies in the evidence brought before her. She noted that the minor at first claimed she did not know her tormentor before changing her testimony to claim that it was Koech.
“It is on the account of these loopholes that I am persuaded that the evidence did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the offense was committed by the appellant. I hold and find that the conviction was unsafe and it is quashed,” the Justice said in her judgment.
“The sentence is hereby set aside. The appeal succeeds both on conviction and sentence, and the appellant shall be set at liberty forthwith, unless otherwise lawfully held,” she added.
