Three Area 24 women who were sentenced to four years imprisonment for assaulting another woman, Bridget Kumchulesi, in October last year have appealed against the sentence at the High Court in Lilongwe.
\nOn December 7 last year, the Magistrates\u2019 Court in Lilongwe sentenced Flora Chinguwo, Norah Chatsika and Gertrude Banda to four years imprisonment each for committing an act intended to cause grievous harm and insulting the modesty of a woman, contrary to sections 235 and 137 of the Penal Code, respectively.
\nAccording to a court document dated December 28 2017, which The Daily Times has seen, the three asked the court to set aside the sentence and substitute the same with a fine or community service.
\nThe three argue that, being first offenders and having pleaded guilty, they were entitled to punishment by fine or community service.
\n\u201cThe lower court erred in law in passing a custodial sentence in the circumstances, thus, the appellants entered a guilty plea at an earliest opportunity, [are] first offenders, of young ages [and] had already embarked on reformation process and the fact that our prisons are not reformatory in nature,\u201d reads the document.
\nThey further say the appellants were subjected to summary punishment before trial and, for this, they deserve lenience.
\n\u201cThe sentence against the appellants on plea of guilty was excessive in the circumstances to the first offenders and young offenders who had already embarked on reformation process and that having imposed custodial sentence the learned Magistrate ought to have considered section 339 and 340 of the CP and EC [Criminal Procedures and Evidence Code] Cap 8:01,\u201d adds the document.
\nLast year, the court also sentenced three women from Area 25 to six years imprisonment each for committing similar offences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three Area 24 women who were sentenced to four years imprisonment for assaulting another woman, Bridget Kumchulesi, in October last year have appealed against the sentence at the High Court in Lilongwe. On December 7 last year, the Magistrates\u2019 Court in Lilongwe sentenced Flora Chinguwo, Norah Chatsika and Gertrude Banda to four years imprisonment each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58493","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\/58493","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=58493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58498,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58493\/revisions\/58498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}