AG should initiate review of all laws on mandatory sentences

Attorney-General Dorcas Oduor. [File, Standard]

One of the most consequential and progressive decisions by the Supreme Court in relation to the criminal justice sector is what is famously known as the Muruatetu case. In this case decided in 2017, involving Francis Karioko Muruatetu V the Republic, the court considered at length the constitutionality of mandatory sentences. These are situations where the law provides that once one is found guilty of a specific offence, the court has to impose a specified sentence. The most famous of these offences in robbery with violence under Section 296 of the penal code.

The mandatory sentence in robbery with violence is especially controversial because of the wide range of the offence. Under what is colloquially referred as "stroke 2" in remand prisons, meaning Section 296(2), for a robbery to be violent and attract a mandatory death sentence, it ranges from the accused having and using a dangerous weapon to them merely being accompanied by others whether or not violence happens. Both attract the death sentence. These legal provisions are grossly unjust.