Wakilii

Rex v Andrea1 (Criminal Appeal No. 150 of 1951)

East African Court of Appeal · [1951] EACA 195 · 1951 Appeal Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Criminal appeal from conviction for murder by the High Court of Tanganyika
Decision
Appellant's conviction for murder upheld

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

A statement to a police officer which is not inculpatory is admissible in evidence and does not fall within the prohibition of section 25 Indian Evidence Act. Section 276 Criminal Procedure Code may be invoked in cases of necessity to read depositions of witnesses not available at trial, but in murder trials it is often essential that depositions of medical witnesses be tested by cross-examination. Where the appellant's false statement to police, denial of having charge of the deceased infant, and conduct in hiding evidence established criminal responsibility beyond reasonable doubt, the conviction for murder was upheld.

Outcome

Appellant's conviction for murder upheld

Facts

The appellant, a married woman, was convicted of murdering a few-weeks-old male child, the illegitimate son of her husband by another woman named Kavumbe. Kavumbe testified that she had left her baby in the appellant's care when she last saw it alive. The child's body was found in a well, 4 feet deep, just below the surface of the water. The sub-assistant surgeon found scratches and cuts on the child's face and mouth, froth on the nose and mouth, extended and congested lungs, and food and water in the stomach, concluding death was due to asphyxia from drowning. The appellant made a statement to police denying she had ever had charge of the child, claiming it had fallen into the well accidentally while being carried by its mother. She admitted being at the well with the child when it was alive but made no effort to raise an alarm or save the child. She hid the cloth that was around the child's body in a latrine cess pit.

Issues

  1. Whether a statement made by the appellant to a police sub-inspector after arrest, which contained nothing inculpatory, was wrongly admitted in evidence.
  2. Whether the reading of the deposition of the sub-assistant surgeon under section 276 Criminal Procedure Code, without cross-examination at trial, prejudiced the appellant.
  3. Whether the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the deceased died an unnatural death.
  4. Whether the prosecution removed beyond reasonable doubt the possibility of accidental death.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.

Rules and key headnotes

Evidence — Admissibility — Statements to Police Officers — Exculpatory Statements
A statement made to a police officer which contains nothing inculpatory is admissible in evidence and does not fall within the prohibition of section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, which excludes only confessions made to police officers.
Criminal Procedure — Reading Depositions at Trial — Section 276 Criminal Procedure Code
Section 276 of the Criminal Procedure Code may be invoked in cases of necessity to permit the reading of depositions of witnesses not available at trial, but in murder trials it is often essential that depositions of medical witnesses should be tested by cross-examination and that the trial judge should have the advantage of having the expert witness before him.
Evidence — Medical Evidence — Cause of Death — Drowning
Where a sub-assistant surgeon finds froth on the nose and mouth, extended and congested lungs, and food and water mixed in the stomach, and opines that death was due to asphyxia from drowning, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the cause of death was drowning, notwithstanding that the body was found near the surface of the water rather than at the bottom of the well.
Criminal Law — Murder — Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt — Circumstantial Evidence
Where an accused denies having charge of a deceased infant unable to walk or reach a well under its own motion, admits being at the well with the child when alive, hides the cloth around the child's body, makes no effort to raise an alarm or save the child, and gives a false statement to police, the weight of circumstantial evidence is sufficient to establish criminal responsibility for the child's death beyond reasonable doubt.

Legislation cited (3)

  • Indian Evidence Act s.25
  • Tanganyika Criminal Procedure Code s.276
  • Tanganyika Criminal Procedure Code s.228

Full judgment

↓ Download PDF

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

Rex v Andrea1 (Criminal Appeal No. 150 of 1951) [1951] EACA 195 (1 January 1951)
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.