A 13-year-old boy from Plumtree, Matabeleland South, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison on aggravated assault charges, has been acquitted by the High Court.
The minor, who had been incarcerated at a Bulawayo Prison, was convicted after imitating inappropriate (pornographic) material he had seen on a peer’s phone and performing the act on a seven-year-old, leading to his arrest and initial sentencing.
Read: https://cite.org.zw/plumtree-teen-sentenced-to-15-years-for-indecent-assault-family-appeals/
The boy’s lawyer, Stanley Chinyanganya, confirmed that the High Court had set aside the conviction and quashed the sentence after they applied for a review.
“The matter had also been submitted to the judge for automatic review. So the High Court has quashed the conviction and set aside the sentence,” he stated.
In his ruling, Justice Ngoni Nduna emphasised that Zimbabwe’s Constitution mandates that a child should not be detained except as a last resort, and if detained, it should be for the shortest appropriate period, with the child kept separately from adults and treated in a manner suitable for their age.
“There is no doubt that the juvenile offender in this case should have been a beneficiary of this facility, had the State and the Trial Magistrate applied their minds in this respect. This was a child facing the prospect of a fifteen-year jail sentence which eventually materialised. On this basis, the proceedings failed to meet the tenets of a fair trial and were conducted in an extremely prejudicial manner, warranting their being quashed,” Justice Nduna said.
The judge identified several critical errors that undermined the trial, including the failure to inform the child of the availability of legal aid, the failure to recommend assistance from the Legal Aid Directorate, and the failure to equip the guardian with sufficient information to help the child.
“It was incumbent upon the Court to ensure that the guardian was assisted in assisting the juvenile,” he added.
Justice Nduna also criticised the sentencing judgment for not considering the Probation Officer’s recommendation, calling it a “serious misdirection” that resulted in a “grave miscarriage of justice.”
“Having said all this, what is clear is that the trial was a total mistrial that cannot be allowed to stand. The only appropriate disposition is to quash the proceedings in their entirety and order the immediate release of the juvenile from prison,” he concluded.
The boy’s mother expressed relief that the ordeal was over.
“As a parent, I am happy that the case is over, and he is in the hands of his grandmother, although as a family, we are still traumatised because the child is not okay. He seems to have become accustomed to the prison environment, being locked up with older people, and was starting to normalise that,” she said.
Since his release, the boy has been showing signs of depression and has been complaining of headaches, added the mother.
His mother also appealed for doctors to assess her son’s mental health. “We depleted all our finances, sold a cow, and received help from family members to cover the legal costs. We were not prepared for this ordeal,” she added.
“Grave miscarriage of justice” this utterance by another court exposes the malfunctioning of judiciary system.