Kamande was crowned winner of the Lang’ata Women Prison beauty pageant in 2016. She has put up a spirited fight for her freedom, arguing that her boyfriend had raped her knowing that he was HIV positive and that he had attempted to kill her.
She was furious after coming to believe her partner, also 24, had tried to infect her with HIV, the country’s High Court heard.She said the wounds were not consistent with Kamande’s allegations that her victim had pinned her down as they fought, noting that post-mortem examinations showed his injuries were inflicted at intervals and not by a person lying down.
Amnesty International condemned the death sentence that was handed to a beauty queen who murdered her boyfriend by stabbing him 25 times. Ruth Kamande – who won a jail beauty pageant while awaiting trial – repeatedly plunged a kitchen knife into Farid Mohammed during the attack at his home in Nairobi, Kenya.
Kamande had pleaded for a more lenient sentence, telling the court she had changed by becoming a prayerful Muslim and even enrolled for an IT degree at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
A probation report also showed she was a first offender and a well-behaved inmate.Counsel submitted that the sentence imposed was unduly harsh and failed to appreciate that
the appellant was 22 years old, a first time offender and that she had been willing to plead guilty to a charge of manslaughter before the plea bargaining process had been aborted by the prosecution.
He called for leniency leading that “even if the conviction on the charge of murder was to stand, sentencing ought to have been adjusted to reflect the mitigating circumstances.”
The respondent however dismissed the concerns raised by the appellant stating: “the alleged unreconciled contradictions, discrepancies and inconsistencies in the prosecution evidence, we find that these were either well explained in other testimony, inconsequential or adequately addressed by the learned trial Judge.”
While convicting the beauty queen, the judge had noted that the prosecution had proven beyond reasonable doubt that the accused committed the offence.
By then Justice Lesiit committed Kamande to death despite the penalty having been lifted by a superior court saying her court was free to exercise judicial discretion.The evidence at the scene had been tampered with, Kamande said in her appeal, once members of the public were allowed entry into the deceased’s home shortly after the incident.
By Newshub