President William Ruto has pardoned former KEMRI boss Davy Koech who was jailed for 6 years in September 2021 for fraudulently obtaining 19.3 million shillings. He was among the 37 individuals pardoned by the President.
In 2022, Koech applied for a review of his sentence at the High Court but the court declined because Koech failed to convince the court that the trial court made an error in sentencing him. “The application has no merit,” said Justice Esther Main of the High Court then.
The pardon comes as a relief to Professor Koech whose family had claimed that he was ill and might not complete his sentence. The pardons are contained in the July 21 Gazette Notice by Attorney General Justine Muturi.
The President has also commuted all death sentences imposed before November 21, 2022, to life imprisonment on the recommendation of the Power of Mercy Advisory Committee.
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Commuting death sentences to life imprisonment comes a few days after the Court of Appeal declared a life imprisonment sentence unconstitutional in a ruling that could affect past criminal cases.
Justices Pauline Nyamweya, Jessie Lesiit, and George Odunga declared the ruling while hearing the case of Julius Kitsao Manyeso versus the Republic (2023).
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According to the three judges, the purpose of jailing a person is to either deter, rehabilitate, denounce, or retribute for the offense committed adding that it was unfair to abolish death sentences only to have convicts spend their whole life behind bars.
However, they argued that a life sentence goes against the aim of conviction which is rehabilitating convicts
“We are equally guided by this holding by the Supreme Court of Kenya, and in the instant appeal, we are of the view that having found the sentence of life imprisonment to be unconstitutional, we have the discretion to interfere with the said sentence,” the bench ruled.
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