The Court of Appeal has maintained the 20-year jail term given to Jacqueline Uwera Nsenga for the murder of her late husband, Juvenal Kananura Nsenga in a disguised vehicle accident.
Justices Afonse Owiny-Dollo, Elizabeth Musoke, and Cheborion Barishaki made the ruling this morning after proving Nsenga’s crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
This is similar to the verdict given by Duncan Gaswaga who found Nsenga guilty of murdering Kananura by running him over with a car at their home in Bugolobi, Kampala on January 10th, 2013.
Nsenga who is serving her jail time in Luzira appealed the sentence saying that the trial judge erred in law and fact with the evidence collected to reach that conclusion.
Through her lawyer, David Mpanga, Nsenga had asked the Court of Appeal to quash the conviction because the prosecution presented witnesses that gave their own interpretations of the statements based on their personal understanding.
She alleges that the trial judge relied on unofficial translations of Kananura’s supposed dying declarations ‘my wife has killed me’ which were in their mother tongue Kinyarwanda by importing legal meaning to them.
The Judges ruled that the evidence of the dying declaration was relevant in supporting the prosecution evidence that the death was not accidental
”Our finding on the revaluation of evidence which prosecution presented regarding the dying declaration is that the trial court rightly found that the dying declaration was reliable evidence that the appellant participated in the incident that led to the death of the deceased”the judge said
