By Barefoot Lawyers
According to media reports, there was an argument over the weekend at a club in Kampala, which led to a brawl, which brawl ended with one person dead, and another injured. The person alleged to have caused the death has now been charged with Murder with some media reports stating the charges might be amended to Manslaughter.
MURDER AND MANSLAUGHTER DEFINED:
1. Under the law, a Homicide is any death caused unlawfully.
2. Certain deaths are lawfully caused e.g death sentence, law enforcement in the performance of their duties.
3. A Murder is a death caused unlawfully. However, in law there are two fundamental elements necessary for a person to be found guilty of murder. These are the “mental intention to cause the death” e.g a reason for causing the death, and the “actual action which caused the death” e.g shooting, stubbing etc.
4. For Manslaughter to exist, the person accused should have performed the act that led to death, without necessarily having a reason or a mental intention to cause that death.
5. The maximum penalty for Murder is death, while for Manslaughter is life imprisonment.
In the case about the fight at the club, the accused is being charged with Murder because there was a death unlawfully caused, and the accused is said to have caused the death.
The argument on whether he will be convicted on murder or not will then come down to the second ingredient necessary for there to be murder i.e the “mental intention to cause the death”. If the mental intention is proven, then he will most likely face a murder conviction, if not, then he most likely will face Manslaughter charges.
WHICH COURT IS AUTHORIZED TO TRY A MURDER CASE:
Usually when a crime like Murder (or any other serious offences ) is committed, the accused is taken before a Magistrate’s court in an area where the crime was committed and the charges will be read. The accused is then taken back to prison until when the case if taken to the High Court, which is the only court authorized to try such offences.
If the Magistrate’s court goes ahead to carry out a trial for a case such as Murder or any other case it is not authorized to try, then the trial or judgement will be invalid (remember the Digital Migration case, where the decision of the Magistrates court was rendered invalid because it never had powers to handle such a matter ).
