Wakilii

Kikonyogo George v Uganda [1998] UGSC 19

Supreme Court · 1998 Appeal Dismissed ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Second criminal appeal to the Supreme Court against the Court of Appeal's confirmation of a High Court murder conviction and death sentence
Decision
Appeal dismissed; conviction for murder and sentence of death confirmed.

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Holding

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal against a murder conviction. The intoxication ground had been abandoned in the Court of Appeal and rested only on counsel's theories unsupported by the record. An accused bears the evidential burden of adducing evidence to raise the defences of insanity or intoxication; here the appellant adduced none and could not even name the drug allegedly taken. The trial court, alive to the possibility of insanity, could not be faulted, and the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant was of sound mind when he committed the murder. The conviction was rightly confirmed.

Facts

The appellant lived at Kasenyi landing site next to Aisa Namusoke (P.W.1), mother of the deceased Falida Najjuko, and had earlier threatened to beat P.W.1. On the evening of 1 December 1992 the appellant announced that he was running mad and asked to be tied to his bed; neighbours, including the local security secretary, tied his hands and legs with gauze wire and dispersed. After confirming through his wife that the neighbours had left, the appellant freed himself, armed himself with a hoe, entered P.W.1's kitchen where the deceased was hiding, pulled her out and struck her on the head three times, rendering her unconscious. He told P.W.1 to go and collect the dead body. The deceased was taken to Entebbe hospital with brain damage and died early the next morning. The appellant testified that he had taken unnamed medicine and was asleep, and denied knowing how the deceased died.

Issues

  1. Whether the defence of intoxication was available to the appellant on the evidence.
  2. Whether the Court of Appeal erred in casting the onus of proving the defence of intoxication upon the appellant.
  3. Whether the defences of insanity and intoxication had been established so as to negate the appellant's capacity to form the intent for murder.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.
  • Conviction and sentence of death confirmed.

Key headnotes

Criminal Law — Defence of Insanity and Intoxication — Evidential burden on the accused
An accused who seeks to rely on the defences of insanity or intoxication bears the burden of adducing evidence at trial sufficient to bring his case within those defences; where no such evidence is adduced, a trial court that has nonetheless considered the possibility of insanity cannot be faulted for rejecting the defence.
Criminal Law — Intoxication — Proof — Failure to identify the intoxicating substance
A defence of intoxication founded on the ingestion of a drug cannot succeed where the accused fails to disclose or name the drug allegedly taken, as the court will not engage in speculation to supply the missing evidential foundation.
Criminal Procedure — Appeals — Ground abandoned in the court below
A ground of appeal abandoned at the hearing in the court below cannot be properly revived on a further appeal, and an appellate court's incidental comments on such an abandoned ground do not reopen it.
Evidence — Burden and standard of proof — Sanity of the accused
Where the question of the accused's sanity is raised, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was of sound mind at the time of the offence, a burden discharged on the facts where no credible evidence of insanity or intoxication is before the court.

Legislation cited (2)

  • Penal Code Act s.183
  • Trial on Indictments Decree 1971 s.64

Cases cited (1)

  • Cheminingwa v R (1956) 23 EACA 451
Source: this page presents Wakilii’s issue analysis and metadata for a publicly reported Ugandan judgment. Any AI-generated summary is marked as such. Judgment text is sourced from the Uganda Legal Information Institute (ulii.org). Wakilii is not affiliated with ULII.