Former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero has pulled a win after the High Court agreed with his application that the trial court unfairly dismissed issues he had raised after the prosecution amended the charge sheet in his Sh58 million graft case.
Justice James Wakiaga said trial courts should be slow in advising or making suggestions to the prosecution so as to be seen to be a neutral arbitrator in disputes taken to court.
Kidero had filed for a review challenging orders by chief magistrate Douglas Ogoti requiring the Director of Public Prosecutions to present and prepare new charge sheets against the former governor and his co-accused persons.
Ogoti had on December 4, 2019 issued a ruling directing the prosecution to amend the charges facing Kidero and others in the Sh58 million corruption case.
The prosecution subsequently presented before court a fresh charge sheet which amended the period of the alleged commission of the offence among others.
But Kidero and his co-accused declined to plead to the charges and instead raised several objections.
One of them was that the prosecution had amended the period of the charge sheet through the backdoor.
Kidero said the trial court did not determine the question of the defective charges but dismissed it on the basis that it was incompetent.
On Friday, Wakiaga said the issues raised by Kidero were new and had not been dealt with in another application by Justice Mumbi Ngugi as earlier claimed by the prosecution.
He said Ogoti failed to accord them right to fair hearing when he dismissed the issues on the charges being defective without giving satisfactory reasons.
“My understanding of Kidero’s complaint was that the trial court casually dismissed their objections without giving reasons but only ruling that it was “incompetent and annoying and deserves to be dismissed”, Wakiaga said.
