The High Court in Eldoret has issued a major ruling reducing the sentence of a man who had spent more than a decade on death row.
On September 16, 2025, Justice Reuben Nyakundi cut the sentence of John Ebenyo from the mandatory death penalty, later commuted to life imprisonment, to a fixed term of twenty-two years in prison.
The decision followed a resentencing petition filed under the Supreme Court’s Muruatetu guidelines, which opened a window for convicts on death row to have their individual circumstances reconsidered.
According to court records, the events leading to Ebenyo’s conviction date back to the night of January 7, 2005, at an estate in Eldoret.
At the time, he was a 30-year-old newly-married student.
On that evening, a domestic quarrel erupted between him and his wife.
The wife fled to the now deceased’s house for refuge, who would step in to separate the couple.
“In the process, I stabbed the deceased on the neck, and he succumbed to his injuries. I admit that I caused serious pain and loss to the deceased and her family,” the court documents stated.
Ebenyo was charged with murder contrary to section 203 as read with section 204 of the Penal Code.
In 2009, after a trial before then High Court judge M. K. Ibrahim, he was convicted and sentenced to death – at that time, the penalty prescribed for murder.
The judge remarked that even if the charge had been reduced to manslaughter, the brutal and unprovoked attack would have attracted the maximum sentence.
Ebenyo appealed against the conviction and sentence within the stipulated period, but, as he told the High Court in his later petition, he never received any communication from the Court of Appeal.
When the Supreme Court in December 2017 declared the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional in Francis Karioko Muruatetu & another v Republic, opening the door for resentencing, he turned to the High Court in search of a lesser term.
Over the years, he filed multiple applications seeking leave to appeal out of time and resentencing.
Justice Nyakundi consolidated all these matters under one petition for ease of case management, making it the lead file.
Ebenyo admitted to causing the death and expressed deep remorse, asking for forgiveness.
“I am truly remorseful, and my heart bleeds with all the tears and the material loss to the deceased. I hope this Honourable Court, the state, and the deceased’s family will find it favourable in their hearts to forgive me. I also forgive all parties wholeheartedly,” he said.
He stressed that he had no previous convictions, had spent more than 15 years behind bars without violating prison rules, and had used his time in custody to train in carpentry up to Grade I level.
He asked the court to consider his youth at the time of the offence, his rehabilitation, and the long period already served, and to impose an “appropriate” term in place of the death sentence.
His submissions echoed the factors the Supreme Court had directed judges to weigh in resentencing: age of the offender, first-offender status, remorsefulness, possibility of reform and social reintegration, and the circumstances of the offence.
The State opposed the application on the basis of the gravity of the crime and the fact that an innocent person had been killed while trying to mediate a domestic dispute.
The prosecution highlighted the unprovoked nature of the attack and the loss suffered by the deceased’s family, urging the court to balance the interests of society and the victim with the mitigation offered by the convict.
Justice Nyakundi cited persuasive authorities from the Caribbean and South Africa on the need for proportionality in sentencing, the doctrine that punishment should fit not only the crime but also the offender, and the constitutional requirement to consider individual circumstances before imposing the ultimate penalty.
In his ruling, the judge traced the history of the case, noting that the applicant had remained in remand throughout his trial and had already served a significant period in custody.
He emphasised the provisions of section 333(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, which obliges courts to credit time spent in custody when imposing a sentence, and cited decisions in which failure to do so had led to appellate courts reducing sentences to the period already served.
He also referred to international human-rights instruments and United Nations standards on pre-trial detention and non-custodial measures, underscoring that even the vilest offender retains human dignity under Article 28 of the Constitution.
Balancing the aggravating factors of the crime with the mitigating factors advanced by Ebenyo, Justice Nyakundi held that the death penalty, though commuted to life imprisonment by the Executive, should be replaced with a definite custodial term.
“In the light of all the decisions starting with Muruatetu there is merit to review the death penalty as now commuted by the Executive to life imprisonment and to have it reduced to a term of 22 years imprisonment,” he observed.
He ordered that four years and four months spent in pre-trial custody be deducted from the 22-year term and directed that the committal warrant be amended to reflect the new sentence.
In a notable instruction, he told the officer-in-charge of Naivasha Correctional Facility to apply the regulation of remission and “set the Applicant free within the scope of the law governing such sentences.”
