When Dismus Omondi was sentenced to death for robbery he thought his life was over. Now he is a free man.
NAIROBI (TrustLaw) – When Dismus Omondi was sentenced to death for robbery with violence in 1999, he thought his life was over.
“I knew I was finished. I did not know there were other options like appeal,” he told TrustLaw. “I thought I was going to die that very day.”
Now he is a free man.
Thanks to the legal training he was given by the non-governmental organisation Kituo cha Sheria (The Centre for Legal Empowerment), Omondi was able to represent himself in court.
He convinced the judges in the High Court of Appeal of his innocence and was released from Shimo la Tewa Prison, near the city of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast, in June 2010.
“It’s like a miracle to me,” he said.
Omondi was arrested in 1998 while relaxing in his local pub and charged with five counts of robbery with violence.
“I was a victim of circumstances. It was because of a land dispute,” he said.
Omondi believes he was framed by his adversaries in the dispute. Kenya's judiciary is notoriously corrupt and it is possible that police officers and judges were bribed to arrest and sentence him.
Since the programme began in 2007, Kituo has trained over 100 prisoners as paralegals, which means they have basic legal training but are not licensed to practise law.
The prisoners help their fellow inmates to prepare for their cases and represent themselves in court. To date, 650 convicts and inmates on remand (those in jail awaiting trial) have won their freedom this way.
Warders are also trained as paralegals to help follow up delayed court proceedings and file court documents.
OVERCROWDED JAILS
In Kenya, only people facing capital charges, such as murder, receive legal aid form the state. Some 70 percent of accused persons have no legal representation in court.
This violates the right to a fair trial as they are not aware of the procedure and substance of the law and can’t represent themselves adequately.
Many people end up in prison because they do not understand the legal process.
“Some of them come from very low income families and therefore they cannot hire a lawyer,” said Margaret Chuma, the officer in charge of Shimo la Tewa.
“Without proper legal process, then you will find that people who are not supposed to be in prison may end up being in prison. But once they are given enough education, how they are supposed to present themselves, the language in court so they can defend themselves … we may minimise cases of people who should be in prison.”
Chuma says the programme is helping to decongest Kenya’s overcrowded prisons, which house 55,000 inmates.
Kituo plans to extend the programme to the women’s prison in Mombasa and to Nairobi.
Paralegal training has broader benefits than simply freeing prisoners from jail. It also increases access to justice for ordinary Kenyans, most of whom cannot afford to pay for legal advice.
“These people [ex-prisoners] out there are able to help people in the communities on different aspects of the law,” said Kigen Korir of Kituo cha Sheria.
Almost all of the prisoners have joined the programme, according to Michael Jimmy Obuollah, vice chairman of the Shimo la Tewa paralegal association.
Obuollah does not get much sleep because he is so busy helping his colleagues prepare their court cases.
He is hopeful that he will be freed, after 14 years in jail, when he goes to court in early 2011.
“I think I got to as far as I have got right now because of being legally ignorant,” he said.
“My firm confidence is that come next round, when I have to face the judges, I will out argue them.”
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
