Judges are known to be tough with their pronouncements, which sometimes send shivers down litigants’ spines. Their rulings bring joy to some parties, a sigh of relief to others, bursts of laughter and in other instances, tears and pain. Some judges are known to be witty and flowery in their description of the parties and circumstances surrounding cases.
WOMAN EATER
Retired judge Richard Kuloba, for instance, once described lawyers as tripling “satanic depravity”. He went on to state that the wrongs done (by lawyers) “are in a litany which stretches like Banquo’s line of kings to the cracks of doom”.
“Today the hungry and unscrupulous advocates are not few; they are not merely hungry and unscrupulous, they triple satanic depravity with wicked greed and an ever-increasing ethical decadence. Their number grows by the day,” he said. Many lawyers were not amused.
Justice James Wakiaga caused a stir last year when he described murder suspect Joseph “Jowie” Irungu as a male version of “a slay queen” and for lack of better terminology, the judge said, “I shall call him a woman eater”. The judge made the remarks when he dismissed Mr Irungu’s application to be freed on bond.
A few years ago, Justice Martha Koome likened the long-running dispute involving the family of former Cabinet minister Mbiyu Koinange “to the classical theatre of the absurd”. The case has been in court for more than three decades and parties have been filing one application after another.
On judicial witticisms, Court of Appeal judges arguably take the cake. In a recent decision by appellate court judges Daniel Musinga, Patrick Kiage and Agnes Murgor, they described Mr Onesmus Ikiki Waithanwa, who died in 1994 aged 77, as “solid polygamist and a prolific sire”. The man had three wives and a total of 21 children and the matter went to the court over the sharing of his property.
And a woman who sought to disinherit her hard-working husband after years of living together as man and wife and acquiring property, received a tongue-lashing.
DECEPTION
“This appeal is yet another rather astonishing example of the deception, greed and heartlessness that rules and chills the human heart as couples coldly contend for property where once love was thought to thrive and thrill,” the judges said in their opening statement. The appeal was filed by Paul Ogari Mayaka against Mary Nyambura Kang’ara, alias Mary Nyambura Paul, who flatly denied that they were ever married. The woman sought to disinherit the man of some property in Riruta but the judges later ruled in favour of Mr Mayaka.
In yet another case, justices Philip Waki, Asike Makhandia and Gatembu Kairu dedicated a lot of space in a commercial dispute distinguishing a word from a phrase — paid and upon payment.
To buttress their point, the judges quoted R.M. Engelhardt, a New York-based poet and writer in his famous collection of poems “The Last Cigarette” stating that: “Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. … All those things.” The judges were deciding a case between the Kenya Revenue Authority and Fintel Ltd.
And to show how serious Kenyans take matters of land, justices William Ouko, Makhandia and Musinga had this to say: “Land, no doubt, is not only the most important factor of production but also a very emotive issue in Kenya. Land remains the most notable source of frequent conflicts between persons and communities.”
The judges were deciding an appeal in a matter involving two land-buying companies, which could not agree on the ownership of some 16 parcels measuring approximately 512 acres in Kiambu County. In a different case, land-buying companies were castigated for taking advantage of poor members and for their never-ending leadership wrangles.
MURDER CASE
In the matter involving Samuru Gituto cooperative farmers society, judges Waki, Musinga and Otieno Odek said: “This is yet another conundrum precipitated by persons masquerading as leaders of co-operative societies and land-buying companies, in the process causing considerable pain and hardship to humble and poor wananchi, whose only sin was to get together and pool their meagre resources to buy and share land.”
And in a murder case involving three family members and their workers who conspired to kill the patriarch, justices Waki, Nambuye and Kiage had no kind words for the convicts.
“Wife, son, sister-in-law and workers threw all sense and sensibility out of their hearts and coldly calculated a death which they executed with chilling efficiency before dumping the body miles away at the bottom of a waterfall in the depths of a forest believing, alas falsely, that as dead men tell no tales, their heinous deed would remain forever hidden from human view. But murder will always cry out, or as Shakespeare would have it, though it have no tongue, it will speak with most miraculous organ. It shrieks out where other crimes merely speak.”
The case involved the murder of David Macharia, who was killed by his family in Kiambu on June 12, 2004. Mr Macharia, a resident of Kamae in Lari, was murdered by his first wife, Ann Waithera Macharia, son Joseph Mwangi, his wife and a worker who later confessed to the killing.