Wakilii

Rex v Kagari (Criminal Appeal No. 232 of 1948)

East African Court of Appeal · [1949] EACA 22 · 1949 Appeal Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Criminal appeal from conviction for murder in the High Court of Tanganyika
Decision
Appellant's conviction for murder upheld

Observed later treatment

No later-treatment classification is recorded for this judgment.

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Holding

An intimation that a wife is about to desert her husband, unaccompanied by some wrongful act or insult of a gross nature, cannot amount to grave and sudden provocation within the meaning of sections 202 and 203 of the Tanganyika Penal Code. The wife's action was not of a character calculated to deprive an ordinary person of self-control. The murder conviction was upheld.

Outcome

Appellant's conviction for murder upheld

Facts

The appellant was convicted of murdering his wife in the High Court of Tanganyika. The appellant and deceased had been married for two years and lived on good terms. The day before the killing, they quarrelled when the wife used the appellant's mother's cooking pot despite having four pots of her own. The appellant struck her on the head with his hand and she ran away, not returning that night. The next morning at 9 a.m., she returned and the appellant, lying in bed, heard her opening a box. He caught her arm and asked what she was doing. She said she wanted to leave. He placed a spear on the ground and told her not to leave. She jumped over the spear to leave the house. The appellant, annoyed because jumping over a spear is forbidden, picked up the spear and stabbed her once in the back. She fell with the spear sticking in her. He withdrew the spear and attempted to spear himself in the stomach. The trial judge accepted the appellant's version of events.

Issues

  1. Whether an intimation by a wife that she is about to desert her husband constitutes grave and sudden provocation sufficient to reduce murder to a lesser offence under sections 202 and 203 of the Tanganyika Penal Code.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.

Rules and key headnotes

Murder — Provocation — Intimation of Desertion by Spouse
An intimation that a wife is about to desert her husband, unaccompanied by some wrongful act or insult of a gross nature, cannot amount to grave and sudden provocation within the meaning of the law of murder.
Murder — Provocation — Test for Ordinary Person
For provocation to reduce murder to a lesser offence, the provocative act must be of a character calculated to deprive an ordinary person of the same class as the accused of self-control.
Murder — Provocation — Proportionality of Response
Where the accused's violent response is out of all proportion to the alleged provocation received, the defence of provocation will not succeed even if the wife's action was provocative.

Legislation cited (2)

  • Tanganyika Penal Code s.202
  • Tanganyika Penal Code s.203

Full judgment

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

Rex v Kagari (Criminal Appeal No. 232 of 1948) [1949] EACA 22 (1 January 1949)
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.