Training in record keeping for court officers, Msagha said, would also prove beneficial.
The judge sought to paint a picture of camaraderie with this group of workers whom he said were underpaid and undervalued.
As with the former CJ, he also wasn’t too humble to take issue with the precedent the Supreme Court has set with regard to election petitions that are not presidential in nature and to do with the vetting of judges and magistrates.
“This is with profound respect but I do not at all,” he said in response to the following question from Attorney General Githu Muigai:
“Do you think it was the intention of the draftsmen of the Constitution that the Supreme Court should have jurisdiction over all election petitions?”
In response to a question on sentencing, the judge made a case for the repealing of minimum sentences in the Sexual Offences Act.
“The Act came into our discussion last week when we were doing our colloquium. It is an act that has failed the prisons today and the population that is there is very young indeed. Between 18 years and 25. They’re almost bypassing the population in respect to robbery with violence. It’s a high time perhaps we advocate for the repealing of the minimum sentences… If the court opts for imprisonment, it ties itself. If it opts for alternative, then it has a way out. In our trainings with magistrates, we have implored upon them, to be very careful in reading the statutes relating to sentences. Where a statute says the accused is ‘liable to’ then that discretion is there.”
The judge who was out in the cold for four years after being adversely mentioned in the Ringera report, might regret the decision made in regard to the 1997 Presidential Petition but that, he sought to impress, should not be taken as the last word on his independence.
“In 1993 I made a decision on bail. The complainant in that decision was a serving President, and the author of the report said that the serving President has stashed millions of shillings out of the country. Despite that, I was able, and I had the confidence and the courage to grant the applicant bail under very difficult situations and circumstances citing the provisions of the Constitution.”
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