Wakilii

Rex v Lujo (Criminal Appeal No. 145 of 1946)

East African Court of Appeal · [1946] EACA 42 · 1946 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
Conviction for murder upheld; appeal dismissed

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

In a murder charge, the date to be stated in the information is the date when the accused committed the unlawful act causing death, not the date when the victim died. This follows from section 205 of the Penal Code, which measures the year-and-a-day rule from the date of the unlawful act. The rule is logical because the accused needs notice of when he allegedly committed the wrongful act to prepare his defence, including any alibi. Appeal dismissed.

Outcome

Conviction for murder upheld; appeal dismissed

Facts

The appellant was charged with murdering his mother on 10th January 1946. The fatal assault occurred on 10th January, but the victim died two days later on 12th January. The trial judge noted this discrepancy and suggested the charge should have stated 12th January as the date of the offence, though he found the error did not invalidate the information. The appellant admitted killing his mother but raised two defences: that he acted under grave and sudden provocation, and that he was of weak intelligence. The court found no substance in either defence, noting the deceased committed no wrongful act and any alleged provocation occurred ten days before the assault, and that legal insanity was not established.

Issues

  1. Whether the date to be stated in a murder charge should be the date of the fatal assault or the date of the victim's death.
  2. Whether the appellant acted under grave and sudden provocation.
  3. Whether the appellant was of weak intelligence such as to affect criminal responsibility.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.

Rules and key headnotes

Murder — Date of Offence in Charge — Fatal Assault and Subsequent Death
In a murder charge, the date to be stated in the information or indictment is the date on which the accused committed the unlawful act causing death, not the date on which the victim died.
Murder — Year and a Day Rule — Reckoning of Time
Under section 205 of the Penal Code, the year-and-a-day period within which death must occur for a killing to constitute murder is reckoned from the date of the last unlawful act contributing to the cause of death, not from the date of death itself.
Criminal Procedure — Particulars in Information — Purpose of Dating Offence
The principal purpose of requiring the date to be stated in a criminal information is to give the accused notice of the case he must meet, including the opportunity to establish an alibi; therefore the material date is when the accused allegedly committed the wrongful act.

Legislation cited (1)

  • Penal Code s.205

Full judgment

↓ Download PDF

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

Rex v Lujo (Criminal Appeal No. 145 of 1946) [1946] EACA 42 (1 January 1946)
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.