Hunting like a pack of jackals which relentlessly pursues its prey until it is exhausted and helpless, scores of convicted death row prisoners have perfected the act of filing petitions across the country.
Guided by self-trained paralegals, these ‘guerrilla like’ tactics have finally borne fruit for 1,457 convicts majority of whom are now free men and women who had initially been condemned to die for either murder or robbery with violence. Their cases have been reheard and they have been re-sentenced.
One of the lucky few is Aloise Onyango Odhiambo, 39, who was sent to Kamiti Maximum Security prison at 23 only.
Although he was charged and convicted of robbery with violence, Onyango still maintains he was at the wrong place at the wrong time on the ill-fated day, June 26, 2003.
He claims he had boarded a matatu in Nairobi to Riruta Satellite for a burial arrangement meeting of his late uncle when the vehicle was commandeered by armed robbers who brutalised and robbed passengers.
Consequently, Onyango was arrested after the vehicle was involved in an accident as the robbers fled from the police. He was identified by a woman in the matatu, prompting the public to beat him senseless.
“I was saved by a traffic police officer from the mob which wanted to kill me. I was however arrested and later charged with robbery with violence. Despite my protestations, I was convicted.”
Miscellaneous application
Onyango explained that when he went to prison, he filed numerous appeals some in Nairobi, others in Kisumu and Machakos but they all failed. He resigned to fate of being confined to Kamiti as a death row convict, waiting to be hanged.
The prisoners, he explained had formed a network where they could file appeals in all parts of the country. They even petitioned Parliament hoping to secure their freedom. Their breakthrough came when the Muruatetu petition was allowed.
While in prison, he says, he read numerous books and became good in legal matters that he drafted petitions for other convicts.
“We were all happy when Francis Muruatetu and Wilson Thirimbu’s petition challenging the constitutionality of death as the only sentence a magistrate or a judge could dispense,” he said.
In 2018, Onyango filed miscellaneous application no. 256 of 2018, at Kibera Law courts where he gave his mitigation.
“I pleaded with the magistrate that I had been through seven courts and all had found me guilty. I just wanted him to be lenient with me for I had wasted 16 years of my precious youth in jail.”
On April 24 2018, Onyango’s life sentence was reduced to 18 years, from the time he had been convicted.
The convict thought he would soon leave prison but he was wrong. According to his calculations, he was entitled to a remission which would reduce his sentence considerably.
Even after the landmark judgement was delivered on December 14, 2017, it was not easy freedom for them.
On May 30, 2019, while giving a verdict on a petition filed by a prisoner in Malindi, Justice Weldon Korir had issued orders to the Commissioner General of Prisons, directing him to ensure prisoners were given remissions of their sentences.
But after waiting in vain for his remission, Onyango filed a petition on September 11, seeking to have the Commissioner General, through the officer-in-charge Kamiti Main Prison compelled to do a remission of his sentence.
In his petition, Onyango argued that the prison authorities had disregarded the orders issued by Korir.
But even before his petition could be prosecuted, Onyango got a remission which saw reduction of his sentence from 18 years to 12 years and eight months.
“I ought to have been released on October 24, 2015. But because I had not been given any remission I stayed in prison for almost three years because of this oversight. If I had not filed my petition at the constitutional court, I would still be languishing in prison.”
He was freed five days before his petition was to be mentioned. On the same day 15 prisoners, whose sentences had been reduced were also released. Onyango, is not about to go back home to Tingare in Siaya. He has set up Prisoners Legal Reform Initiative to agitate for rights of inmates.
