COURT OVERTURNS HEADTEACHER’S 20-YEAR SENTENCE, ACCUSED OF AGGRAVATED DEFILEMENT.

By:Reporter,kiboga.

The Court of Appeal has overturned the conviction and sentence handed to Abdalla Ssozi, the former headteacher of Back to God Primary School for defiling four minors. Ssozi was convicted on May 28, 2014, on four counts of aggravated defilement and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on each of the four cases although the sentence was to run concurrently.

Ssozi in 2012, was arrested from Lutti village in Kiboga district for allegedly raping four pupils in his school aged 8, 9, 12, and 14 years. The victims’ names were never disclosed because they were minors. According to the court records, in August 2011, Ssozi called one of the victims to his home to cook for him.

Meanwhile, he allegedly asked the girl after eating if she wanted to be clever, to which she responded in the affirmative. The records show that he then asked her to remove her clothes, then smeared her whole body with jelly, and then had sexual intercourse with her.

The charge sheet also shows that between May and August 2012, Ssozi called the other three victims at his home and asked them whether they would also want to be clever to which they responded in the positive and had sex with them.

None of the victims reported the matter until September 4, 2012, when he wanted to repeat his actions to one of the victims who refused to comply and instead informed his father who also reported the matter to the Local Council leading to Ssozi’s arrest.

After the completion of the investigations, he was presented before High Court, judge Wilson Musaalu Musene in a 2013 criminal session who convicted him on his own plea of guilty and sentenced him to 20 years’ imprisonment.

He, however, appealed his conviction and sentence in 2014, on one ground that he was wrongly convicted without properly taking a plea on the indictment, which caused him a serious miscarriage of justice. He asked the court to overturn both the conviction and sentence and set him free.

During the hearing of his application, Ssozi’s lawyer Bwiruka Richard told the court that on all four counts, the indictment was read to the appellant and he admitted having sexual intercourse with the victims.

However, the Court went ahead to convict him, which he said was against established legal edicts.In their response, the State Attorneys; Joseph Kyomuhendo and Akatukunda Joel Kakuru opposed the appeal arguing that the case arose out of a Plea Bargain Agreement made between the prosecution, the appellant, and defense counsel in which Ssozi freely agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of 20 years imprisonment.

But in their ruling, the court of appeal Justices; Richard Buteera, Irene Mulyagonja, and Eva Luswata said the court erred in convicting and sentencing Ssozi on his own plea of guilty without first reading to him properly the charges as the law requires .They added that the failure of the trial Judge to give Ssozi an opportunity to respond to the summary of the facts that were read from the Plea Bargain Agreement left some doubt as to the finality of the plea of guilty upon which the Judge convicted him.

However, although they observed that the ordinary course of action would have been to send the file back to the High Court for the retrial, they considered the 10 years that Ssozi has spent in prison following his arrest in September 2012 when he was only 26 years old and the fact that the victims are now aged 18, 19, 22 and 24 years respectively, ordering retrial might be problematic.