No chance to plea saves man from long sentence

A man convicted of killing his two and-a-half-year-old son did not get a chance to plead for mercy before the High Court, and that turned out to be his saving grace.

Roma Furaha was convicted of poisoning his son, Lawrence Roma, on September 2, 2018. Furaha also took the poison but survived, while the child was not so lucky.

The man, 22 at the time, was sentenced to 30 years without being given a chance to mitigate.

The High Court convicted him on April 21, 2020.

The Court of Appeal has now come to his rescue, finding that besides the failure to allow him to plead with the court for leniency, his mental state was not assessed to understand his emotional predisposition before he committed the crime.

He has now been given 20 years instead, which will be counted from 2018 when he was first arrested and detained.

The Court of Appeal decision is dated February 21, 2025.

Evidence shows that the man was in a co-parenting arrangement with the boy’s mother, with whom he had squabbles.

They were not living together but had an arrangement where he would take the child for some hours on specific days and return him to the mother later.

On the fateful day, a few minutes after taking the child, neighbours told the woman to run to the man’s home because her boy was dying.

When she found him foaming at the mouth and panting for breath, she fainted. Furaha was also on the ground fighting for his life.

The three were taken to various hospitals.

The boy passed away and Furaha was arrested and chained to his hospital bed on suspicion of murder.

In an unsworn statement in court, Furaha denied killing his son. He testified that he was a tuk-tuk driver and that he lived with the deceased.

Furaha said he was home with the boy when he started complaining of pain.

At around 3:30 pm, he took his son to the General Hospital, where he learned that his child had passed on.

He then went to the police station, where he was charged with killing his child through poisoning.

The High Court said the evidence was enough to conclude Furaha committed the offense.

It is the mitigation question that allowed the three judges of appeal to vary the sentence. 

“We are satisfied that a case has been made for us to interfere with the learned Judge’s exercise of discretion for all the reasons we have stated herein. There is a marked difference when an accused person is given an opportunity to mitigate and where the trial court comes up with the mitigation, maybe out of what they have heard during the trial, or what they can glean after interacting with the case,” they said.

“The appellant was 22 years old when he committed this offense. He was handed down 30 years imprisonment. Given the circumstances of the case, a young father whose girlfriend had abandoned their tender-age child with him, it was necessary to have a social inquiry to assist the court in assessing the mind of the accused and the circumstances of the case to arrive at an appropriate sentence.”

The court stressed the importance of mitigation, saying that it does inform or affect the sentence; it can help the court get more evidence on sentencing from victims and social inquiry reports from the Probation Department.

“All in all, we think that the sentence of 30 years imprisonment without evidence of a previous record and aggravating circumstances was harsh, taking into account the violations of fair hearing and procedural breaches. We think that the appellant’s appeal against the sentence should succeed,” the judges said.

“Furthermore, where reports are filed, the accused person has a right to challenge the same. There is no doubt that the procedure adopted by the learned trial judge flouted fair hearing and procedural laws.”