Wakilii

Mulindwa Samuel v Uganda (Criminal Appeal 41 of 2000)

Supreme Court · [2002] UGSC 31 · 2002 Appeal Dismissed ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Second criminal appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal's dismissal of an appeal against High Court conviction for aggravated robbery and murder
Decision
Appeal dismissed; conviction for aggravated robbery and murder upheld

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Cited — treatment unverified cited in 3 (treatment unverified) Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — not an assertion that this case is good law.

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Holding

The Supreme Court dismissed the second appeal and upheld the conviction for aggravated robbery and murder. It held the appellant was properly identified by two prosecution witnesses in broad daylight over a sufficient period, and that the failure to hold an identification parade was not fatal where other evidence sufficiently connected the accused to the crime. The doctrine of recent possession was correctly applied: the appellant's possession of recently stolen money and travellers' cheques, his flight, and his admission that the bag was his were incompatible with innocence. The Court of Appeal had adequately re-evaluated the evidence, and the conviction was supported by ample evidence.

Facts

On 23 December 1993 at about 11.00 a.m., an armed gang invaded the Red Fox Foreign Exchange Bureau on Kampala Road, disarmed the police guards and robbed it of travellers' cheques, US Dollars and Pound Sterling. A gunman ordered workers and customers to lie down while others stuffed money and cheques into a polythene bag. In the course of escape, one robber shot dead a policeman guarding a nearby bank. The appellant was seen fleeing the scene carrying a black polythene bag, was chased and arrested by a policeman, and escorted to Central Police Station, where the bag was found to contain part of the stolen money and travellers' cheques. He was identified by the Bureau's Managing Director (PW1) and a customer (PW2) present at the time. The appellant raised a defence of alibi and claimed he had picked up the bag dropped by fleeing persons without knowing its contents, but he had earlier told police the bag was his and contained money to buy electrical appliances.

Issues

  1. Whether the appellant was properly identified as one of the robbers given the conditions at the scene of the crime.
  2. Whether the failure to hold an identification parade was fatal to the appellant's conviction.
  3. Whether the doctrine of recent possession of stolen property was correctly applied to the appellant.
  4. Whether the Court of Appeal, as first appellate court, properly re-evaluated the evidence as a whole.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.

Key headnotes

Criminal Evidence — Identification — Failure to Hold an Identification Parade
Where other evidence sufficiently connects an accused with the crime, the failure to hold an identification parade is not fatal to the conviction.
Criminal Evidence — Identification — Conditions Favouring Correct Identification
Identification by witnesses is reliable where the incident occurred in broad daylight, the witnesses came close to the accused over a sufficient period of time, and gave a clear description of the accused's physical appearance, even on a first encounter.
Circumstantial Evidence — Doctrine of Recent Possession of Stolen Property
Possession of property recently stolen, where the inculpatory facts are incompatible with the innocence of the accused and incapable of explanation upon any other reasonable hypothesis than guilt, supports an inference that the possessor is the thief; the presumption is an application of the ordinary rule relating to circumstantial evidence.
Appeals — Duty of First Appellate Court to Re-evaluate Evidence
A first appellate court is required to re-evaluate the evidence in the case as a whole and reach its own conclusion; there is no standard format for such re-evaluation.

Legislation cited (3)

  • Penal Code Act s.272
  • Penal Code Act s.273(2)
  • Penal Code Act s.183

Cases cited (2)

  • Jethva and Another v Republic (1969) EA 459
  • Andrea Obonyo and Others v R (1962) EA 542
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.