The court of Appeal through Justices Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, Elizabeth Musoke & Cheborion Barishaki, has firmly upheld the 20-year jail term given to Jacqueline Uwera Nsenga for the of her late husband, a one Juvenal Nsenga in a murder disguised as a vehicle accident.
In 2014, Jacqueline was found guilty of killing her husband by running over him with a car on the night of 10th January 2013, at their family home in Bugolobi, a Kampala suburb.
The presiding Judge then, Justice Duncan Gaswaga ruled that based on the evidence presented before court, Nsenga could not have knocked her husband accidentally as claimed.
Court had received implicating evidence that the couple by the time of the incident were sleeping in separate bedrooms, after a bitter squabble ensued between them over the deceased’s said “affair” with Uwera’s niece, Loretta Mutoni who had been living with the couple until she was sent away by Jacqueline on suspicion of their budding affair.
According to the judge, prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accident which claimed Nsenga’s life was aforethought.
Through her lawyers led by David Mpanga, Nsenga told the Court of Appeal that the lower court erred by relying on statements made by the deceased outside court.
She argued that court shouldn’t have relied on the dying declaration of Nsenga’s husband who uttered “my wife has killed me” to prove that there was intent of murder. He explained to the judges that the statement alone was not enough to cause intent, and Nsenga was unlawfully convicted.
She further faulted the Lower court judge for having erred in law and fact when he failed to properly evaluate the evidence adduced at the trial and apply it to the offence of murder in as far it’s concerned in the Penal Code Act.
