Kilo of meat sent man to gallows where he waited for 9 years

Kirinyaga, Kenya: When Gabriel Migwi swaggered into Flamingo Bar for his favourite tipple, the one thing on his mind was getting drunk.

He had just left a coffee farmers’ meeting in Kiangai, Kirinyaga County, and was in such high spirits that he wanted to drink and chant a song or two.

In fact, so happy was he that he had even bought a kilo of meat for his family on his way to the bar.

But the meat would never get home, as five revellers – probably envious of his good mood – attacked him in the urinal and robbed him of not only the delicacy but also Sh150 cash and his Motorola mobile phone.

Minor as the mugging incident, which happened on July 26, 2006, may sound, it landed a local idler in court where he was sentenced to death.

Charles Ndegwa escaped the hangman’s noose only last week after his appeal was allowed by the Court of Appeal sitting in Nyeri.

Earlier, a Kirinyaga magistrate court had sentenced him to death – a conviction that had been upheld by the Embu High Court, prompting him to move to the higher court.

A medical report filed in the court showed that Migwi suffered a wound in the front of his neck, the result of injuries inflicted by both a sharp and blunt object.

This caused him to experience difficulty swallowing.

“I had gone to the urinal for a short call but it was full, so I waited outside and that was when they attacked and took everything away, including the meat,” recounted Migwi.

But last week, judges ruled that Ndegwa had not been properly identified as one of the people who attacked the complainant. He was set free after nine years of cooling his heels in jail. “We find this evidence of merely stating the appellant was in the company of others without more is not safe to sustain a conviction of robbery with violence,” ruled appellate judges Alnashir Visram, Martha Koome and Otieno Odek.