A plea bargain spared a woman from jail although she had beaten her two-year-old nephew to death because she thought he was possessed by a demon.
Instead she got three years’ probation on February 5. She had been treated for schizophrenia, hospitalised and later declared fit for trial. She was deeply remorseful.
Jane Mugure Kimani, then a catering student, was 24 years old when she committed the offence in 2018.
She kicked the child, Gift Kimani, making him hit the wall head-first. She then beat him on the thighs and back of the head several times using firewood and declaring “akona mashetani (he’s possessed).”
On August 5, 2018, she was arrested for the murder.
When arraigned in court, she pleaded guilty. She then sought a plea bargain framework under which she was charged with manslaughter.
She told the court she repeatedly hit him with a stick, while condemning the evil spirit that had allegedly possessed him.
The child was declared dead on arrival at hospital.
A psychiatric assessment reported, “She has a psychotic disorder and her thoughts and speech have a big problem.”
On October 15, 2018, she was admitted at the Mathari National Hospital, where she has been receiving treatment.
An attending doctor declared she was fit to stand trial on January 22, 2019.
The court imposed a non-custodial sentence, finding that she was not in the right state of mind when she committed the offence. The supervised sentence will run for three years.
The court said that from the onset of her trial, which was February 24, 2020, Kimani had demonstrated remorse for her action and that she had been ready and willing to enter a plea of guilty.
“Her behaviour showed signs of remorse; from the facts of the case, the state was seeking a custodial sentence and proposed a term of two years’ imprisonment,” the court said.
The February 5 judgment said that the convict had not wasted the court’s time by readily admitting to the offence and entering into a plea agreement. It said she saved everybody the agony of going through a full trial.
“In mitigation, counsel for the convict associated himself with the prosecution’s submissions that the convict, in accepting the plea bargain agreement, had not wasted the court’s time; she was extremely remorseful and that this was a matter with unfortunate circumstances,” the court said.
“The convict is living with a mental health condition, schizophrenia, which led to the unfortunate incident, that her bail bond conditions took into account her condition to allow her to undergo treatment away from remand custody.
“The victim and convict are related, the deceased was a nephew to the convict and her family that has lost the deceased would not wish to lose their daughter to a custodial sentence; counsel prayed for a lenient sentence of two years, preferably non-custodial, on grounds that the community was not hostile.”
