Wakilii

Marere v Uganda (Criminal Application 4 of 2021)

Supreme Court · [2021] UGSC 35 · 2021 Application Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Application for bail pending the hearing of a criminal appeal in the Supreme Court
Decision
Application for bail pending appeal dismissed; appeal directed to be fast-tracked and cause-listed for the next criminal session.

Observed later treatment

No later-treatment classification is recorded for this judgment.

Citator coverage is limited to judgments in the Wakilii corpus and source-matched treatment records. Absence of a signal is not an assertion that the case remains good law.

AI-generated summary. This summary was generated by AI from the full text of the judgment. It may contain errors or omissions—always read the source judgment before relying on it.

Holding

On an application for bail pending appeal by an applicant convicted of murder and sentenced (on appeal) to 18 years' imprisonment, the Court held that a convicted person, no longer shielded by the presumption of innocence under Article 28(3), must satisfy a more stringent test and show exceptional and unusual circumstances. The likelihood of success could not be gauged because the records of proceedings and lower-court judgments were not before the Court. Good character, first-offender status, advanced age and ill-health did not, without proof that the prison medical facility could not treat her, amount to exceptional circumstances, and no unusual delay was shown. The application was dismissed, with a direction to fast-track the appeal.

Outcome

Application for bail pending appeal dismissed; appeal directed to be fast-tracked and cause-listed for the next criminal session.

Facts

The applicant and six others were charged with the murder of Rukandonda George on 25 November 2015 in Kanungu District. They were convicted at the High Court in Kabale (Criminal Case No. 52 of 2015), and the applicant was sentenced on 7 June 2017 to 29 years and 10 months' imprisonment. On appeal, the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction but reduced the sentence to 18 years' imprisonment. The applicant then appealed to the Supreme Court (Criminal Appeal No. 26 of 2019) and applied for bail pending that appeal. She relied on her advanced age (77), status as a first offender, good character and community service, ill-health (chronic allergic bronchitis with asthmatic components, HIV/AIDS and peripheral neuropathy), prior compliance with High Court bail terms, and the risk of substantial delay during the COVID-19 period. The record before the Court contained only partial pages of the lower courts' judgments, mainly addressing sentence.

Issues

  1. Whether the applicant established the exceptional and unusual circumstances required to justify the grant of bail pending appeal.
  2. Whether the applicant's appeal could be assessed as having a reasonable possibility of success in the absence of the lower courts' records of proceedings.
  3. Whether the applicant's advanced age, ill-health, good character and risk of delay amounted to exceptional circumstances justifying release on bail.

Orders

  • Application dismissed.
  • The Registrar of the Court is directed to fast track and cause list the applicant's appeal for hearing at the next criminal session of the year.

Rules and key headnotes

Bail — Bail Pending Appeal — Exceptional and Unusual Circumstances
An applicant for bail pending appeal, being already convicted and no longer wholly protected by the presumption of innocence under Article 28(3) of the Constitution, must be subjected to a more stringent test and must establish exceptional and unusual circumstances to justify release.
Bail — Bail Pending Appeal — Guidelines for Grant
The factors guiding the grant of bail pending appeal are the character of the applicant, whether the applicant is a first offender, whether the offence involved personal violence, whether the appeal is not frivolous and has a reasonable possibility of success, the possibility of substantial delay in determining the appeal, and compliance with prior bail conditions; not all factors need be present, and each case turns on its own facts.
Bail — Bail Pending Appeal — Assessing Possibility of Success
A court cannot assess the possibility of success of an appeal for the purposes of bail without the relevant record of proceedings, the judgment appealed from and the memorandum of appeal; where these are absent or scanty the court is not positioned to find the appeal frivolous or likely to succeed.
Bail — Bail Pending Appeal — Weight of Good Character
Good character, first-offender status and being a family breadwinner are not by themselves exceptional or unusual, and such factors recede to the background when weighed against the seriousness of the offence and the likelihood of the appeal succeeding.
Bail — Ill-Health as Exceptional Circumstance — Proof Required
Ill-health justifies bail as an exceptional circumstance only where there is evidence, akin to certification under section 15(3) of the Trial on Indictments Act, that the prison or detention facility is incapable of providing adequate medical treatment while the applicant remains in custody.
Bail — Bail Pending Appeal — Delay as Exceptional Circumstance
Delay amounts to an exceptional circumstance justifying bail pending appeal only where the delay is itself unusual, assessed by whether there is a real risk that the sentence, or a considerable portion of it, will have been served before the appeal is heard.

Legislation cited (12)

Cases cited (5)

  • Arvind Patel v Uganda (Criminal Application No. 1 of 2003)
  • Mubbale Peter v Uganda (Miscellaneous Application No. 82 of 2017)
  • John Muhanguzi Kashaka v Uganda (Miscellaneous Application No. 18 of 2019)
  • Ochepa Godfrey v Uganda (Miscellaneous Application No. 7 of 2020)
  • Kyeyune Mitala Julius v Uganda (Criminal Application No. 9 of 2016)

Full judgment

↓ Download PDF

The original judgment as reported. Read the original PDF before relying on any passage.

Marere v Uganda (Criminal Application 4 of 2021) [2021] UGSC 35 (12 August 2021)
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.