- Mark Okong’o and Alphacsar Ochieng, were sentenced to death by the High court some six years ago.
- But given the new Supreme Court jurisprudence on death sentence, the court vacated the death penalty, opting for life.
Image: FILE
Two men who riled up an angry mob against an arson suspect, tied his hands and legs before leading a rain of stones and blows on him till he died, narrowly escaped a hangman.
The two, Mark Okong’o and Alphacsar Ochieng, were sentenced to death by the High court some six years ago for inciting the charged mob to kill Swineton Otieno Oyugi.
But a Kisumu appeals court gave them a life line in a December decision that saw their sentence commuted to life behind bars.
Court records show that on January 12, 2014, three thatched houses got torched by unknown arsonists in Nyamonye village, Homa Bay.
The following day, when the killing would happen, the area assistant chief summoned a village for a Baraza under a tree behind the victim’s mother’s home to discuss the incident.
As the villagers streamed, factions emerged with one already at the administrator’s office awaiting his arrival, while another, mainly rowdy youths, stood across the road appearing to have a parallel meeting.
The lot at the assistant chief’s office included Swineton Otieno Oyugi, his mother Teresa Ajwang Oyugi, and his sister Maureen Akoth Onyango.
By half past midday the Assistant Chief had not arrived, the court heard, and the group across the road charged towards the other lot.
At once, one man named Philip Ochieng, who was not arraigned in court, held the victim with his collar and stood him up before hitting him in the head and neck, making him fall to the ground.
Okongó would then hold Swineton down and tied his hands and legs with a rope.
The first appellant and another man would then pick up a piece of wood and hit the man severally on the back and neck.
The mother shouted for help, asking: “Why are you killing my son? What is it that he has done?”
Okongó, the first appellant, turned to the distraught mother, asking what she was saying, and sicking the crowd to bring the old woman to him so he could rape her.
“The second appellant [Alphacsar], who was behind her, asked, as she started running away, “Where is she? Let me get her so I can have sexual intercourse with her,”the court papers read.
The mother fled the scene, outpacing the second appellant who was chasing her, and locked herself inside her house.
A few minutes later, Swinetone, lying on his face and on a pool of his blood, was lifeless.
When the mother returned to the scene, her son’s body was covered by twigs and the crowd ran away, one after the other.
“A few minutes later, PW1[Teresa] decided to return to the scene to see what had happened, meeting her daughter, Maureen Akoth on the way. About 4 meters from the scene, she saw the people who had attacked the deceased covering his body with twigs, then they fled from the scene."
"The piece of wood which had been used to assault her son had been left behind. She noted that the deceased’s head was swollen; he was lying with his head facing down; had vomited blood and was badly beaten on the back.”
A postmortem on the body showed that Swinetone suffered “multiple bruises and a deformed skull with multiple fractures.”
“He also had multiple long bone fractures- both femurs were fractured at the mid shaft, and the humerus was also fractured. The deceased’s nasal bridge was broken, and the lungs had a massive collection of blood. The cause of death was head injury and massive haemothorax.”
Upon conviction, the two appealed in 2020, citing various grounds that a three-judge bench unanimously dismissed.
Besides claiming that they were never on the scene and did not even know what the killing was about, the duo complained that the judge did not listen to their defense, and that the prosecution’s case was inconsistent and contradicted itself.
But on the death sentence, the judges held that the two deserved death penalty “noting the cruel manner in which the deceased met his death... [owing to] the savage manner in which the appellants attacked the deceased, leading to his death.
But given the new Supreme Court jurisprudence on death sentence, the court vacated the death penalty, opting for life.
“…..We are cognisant, however, of the fact that though the death penalty remains in the Penal Code, it has not been executed in the last 37 years. Those on death row in this country have routinely had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.”