The Supreme Court of Appeal will next Monday April 3, 2017 start hearing bail application, pending appeal for convicted former justice minister, Raphael Kasambara, who was sentenced to 13 years in jail for conspiracy to murder former budget director Paul Mphwiyo.<\/p>\n
Judiciary Spokesperson, Mlenga Mvula, confirmed Tuesday that Justice Dustain Mwaungulu will hear the application next Monday on whether to grant bail to Kasambara who has been in prison for the last eight months.<\/p>\n
Kasambara said he was going to appeal on a stay on bail revocation soon after Judge Michael Mtambo pronounced the sentence in September 2016, in a case which started in 2013, following the shooting of Mphwiyo outside his Area 43 house in Lilongwe on September 13, 2013.<\/p>\n
Some of the skeletal argument in support of notice for bail include that the appellant is unlikely to abscond as he is a Malawian citizen with assets in the country, a wife and children and that prior to his conviction, he was practising the profession of law and running a business.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the trial, the appellant was on bail, he attended to all the hearings of his case when the Court sat, he did not delay the proceedings. Three times during the trial, the appellant travelled outside Malawi and returned thereafter. It is thus submitted that, should the appellant be granted bail, he would not abscond and he would attend to the appeal herein,\u201d reads the appeal in part.<\/p>\n
Kasambara also argues that he has already spent over eight months in custody with no progress on his appeal, despite the fact that the appeal is very likely to succeed.<\/p>\n
Reads the appeal: \u201cYour Lordship, we are aware that at this stage, it is not the function of the court to make a determination on the merits of the appeal. However, the prospect of success of an appellant\u2019s appeal is a relevant factor for the court to consider in determining whether or not to grant bail pending appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kasambara told journalists after he was convicted in July 2016 that he was a \u2018victim of miscarriage of justice\u2019 and maintained that he was innocent.<\/p>\n
The shooting of Mphwiyo is believed to be the genesis of revelations of mass looting of public funds at Capital Hill christened Cashgate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court of Appeal will next Monday April 3, 2017 start hearing bail application, pending appeal for convicted former justice minister, Raphael Kasambara, who was sentenced to 13 years in jail for conspiracy to murder former budget director Paul Mphwiyo. Judiciary Spokesperson, Mlenga Mvula, confirmed Tuesday that Justice Dustain Mwaungulu will hear the application […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43454,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43451\/revisions\/43454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}