Supreme Court closes door on harsh sentence complaints

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The Supreme Court has ruled that the severity of a sentence cannot be challenged before it.

However, a panel of five justices led by Lillian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza stated that the challenge can only be structured against a query on a matter of law.

Other justices on the panel were Elizabeth Musoke, Christopher Izama Madrama, Catherine Bamugemereire and Monica Mugenyi.

“Under section 5(3) of the Judicature Act, an appellant cannot challenge the severity of a sentence before the Supreme Court except on a question of law,” Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza ruled.

The ruling was prompted by an appeal filed by three men, who were convicted of murder under sections 188 and 189 of the Penal Code Act and sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment each by the High Court at Jinja.

The convicts are Peter Odeke, Michael Etudi and Godfrey Obwana.

Court records indicate that the convict’s first application to the Court of Appeal was dismissed, with the Court upholding both conviction and sentence.

Dissatisfied, they appealed to the Supreme Court on the sole ground that the sentence was illegal, harsh, excessive, and inconsistent with previous sentencing precedents.

In a judgment dated April 11, 2025, the court found that the convict’s appeal was improperly disguised as raising a point of law while, in reality, it merely contested the harshness of the sentence.

The justices said the severity of the sentence alone is not a ground of appeal to the Supreme Court, citing precedents in cases such as Moses Karisa vs Uganda and Jamada Nzabaikukize vs Uganda.

Since no legal error or question of law of public importance was demonstrated, the Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the 25-year sentences imposed against the appellants by the trial court and affirmed by the Court of Appeal.

“This appeal was not brought to this court in conformity with the law. We have no cause to believe that these sentences raise a question of law so as to warrant intervention. An appellant is precluded from appealing to this court on grounds of severity of sentence,” Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza ruled.

Prosecution states that the convicts on June 11, 2007, lured Aiseri Atebat (the deceased) from her home in Jinja district to the garden and strangled her to death. The convicts later dumped Atebat’s body in a bush behind her pit latrine.

A week later, the body was recovered by the deceased’s grandchild, and investigations commenced, resulting in the arrest of the three men.