Austin Karonga
A Harare man, Felix Muteve has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of Jemias Bangu using blunt objects and umbrella stick at Sam Marange’s car park in Whitehouse, Harare.
The heinous crime occurred on July 2, 2016 after midnight when the accused in the company of four other co-accused assaulted the deceased who had trespassed into their guarded car park in a drunken state.
High Court judge, Justice Davison Moses Foronda’s Judgement of death by assault was supported by a pathologist report presented before the court.
“The deceased was subjected to brutal assaults when he was in the offender’s captivity resulting in him sustaining wounds from which he died. It is aggravating that the deceased was disabled through torture by his assailants who fractured his limbs thus causing further life threatening injuries to the deceased,” read part of the judgement.
In reaching his Judgement, Justice Foroma took into account the three pre-trial years before the verdict.
“The court will also take into account, to the offender’s credit, the fact that what caused the offender to initially regard the deceased as a thief is that he was caught in a guarded car park at a time which the suspicion of him being a thief was very compelling. This, however, did not warrant the deceased being brutally assaulted,” he said.
“Once the deceased had been captured, initially his captors ought to have taken him to police immediately or at the very least inform the police that they had caught a thief in the car park so that police would arrange to collect him. The decision by the offender to deal with the deceased without alerting the police amounts to the proverbial ‘taking the law into their own hands’ which this court will not condone.”
He said a custodial 20-year jail sentence will serve as a deterrent to would -be -offenders of cases of this nature.
“Human life is sacrosanct and the court knows too well that once lost it is not replaceable. It is for this reason that courts will always guard this God given gift jealously. The deceased died a very painful death all as a result of the offender’s stubborn refusal to have the deceased released despite the other guards pointing to the deceased’s innocence,” said Justice Foroma.
“The court finds that capital punishment would not be warranted in the circumstances of this case. However a sentence which will send the correct message to the offender and any likeminded is called for. Such a message is that taking the law into one’s own hands and causing loss of human life is not tolerated by the law.”