By; Rachael Najjuma
08th August 2019
The court of appeal has overruled the life in prison sentence handed over to Richard Alinaitwe by the High court in 2009 to 30 years.
According to the court of appeal Justices; Elizabeth Musoke, Hellen Obore and Ezekiel Muhanguzi in their judgment today said that the high court didn’t consider the age of the convict by the time he committed the crime he was a young man aged 24 years but at the same time the 20 year period the convict has spent in prison is said to have reformed according to the prison authorities.
Given the five years and three months the convict spent on remand the 30 years sentence has been reduced to 24 years and 9 months and further their justices said that the sentence should be counted from 2003 the year of conviction meaning that the convict is left with 8 years in prison.
Arinaitwe through his lawyer Elizabeth Nyansingwa had asked the Court of Appeal to quash his life sentence on six grounds
Arinaitwe has spent more than 20 years in Luzira prison for murdering an American Volunteer Cecilia Goetz at Hotel Equatorial in Kampala in 1998 who had come to Uganda to follow up on the utilization of HIV/AIDS funds.
In 2002 Arinaitwe also tried to strangle Buganda Road Court Chief Magistrate Elizabeth Alvidza now a judge in the Commercial Court and had previously been implicated in a number of criminal offenses such as robbery at a Forex Bureau at Sheraton Hotel.
Next:
Previous:
