The accused person appeared before a Magistrate sitting at Masvingo charged with 3 counts of contravening section 114(2)of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act [Chapter 9:23]. In essence accused stole 3 donkeys from the complainant in count one, one donkey from the complainant in count two and 6 donkeys from the complainant in count three. In total he stole 10 donkeys of which only three donkeys were recovered. More
At the close of the case for the state we dismissed the accused’s application for discharge made in terms of s 198(3) of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act [Chapter 9:07]. We gave our reasons ex tempore. The accused had raised the defence of self-defence and our view was that the accused’s version of events should be properly ventilated during his defence case to properly ascertain if indeed he could not be convicted of the charge of murder or any other permissible verdict. In short it was necessary for the accused to lay in his evidence the factual basis of... More
This case was poorly investigated, prosecuted in a very onerous way and also defended in a clumsy way. In our view this conclusion is inescapable when one looks at the evidence presented before us. The investigating officer was clearly untruthful. The State sought not to put before the court facts which were reasonably within its knowledge and the defence was hell bent to deny or, dispute the obvious. More
This was a very protracted trial which commenced on 22 July, 2019 and the defence witness only testified on 16 July 2020, 2020 after which judgment was postponed to today 18th September, 2020. During course of the trial,a trial within a trial was held for the determination of the admission of a warned and cautioned statement and the accompanying video, now exhibits 5(a) and (b) which culminated in a judgment HMA 56/19 delivered on 15 November 2019. We now incorporate this judgment in this final judgment to avoid repetition of some of the issues. More
