Godlizen Davidi @ Mweta and Another versus The Republic; Criminal Appeal No 259 of 2014: Court of Appeal of Tanzania at Arusha (Unreported).
- Criminal Procedure
- Cautioned statement – recording of statement after expiry of time prescribed by law without extension effect.
- Evidence
- Retracted confession – confession has been retracted – what is the procedure to be followed.
- Circumstantial evidence – what principles are applicable to ground conviction on circumstantial evidence?
Held :-
(i) When a cautioned statement is recorded after the elapse of the available basic period of four hours for an interview of a suspect, unless extension of time had been granted for its late recording, the trial court should not admit it in evidence.
(ii) When confession is retracted in murder cases, the High Court should hold trial within trial in the absence of assessors to test its voluntariness. Omission to do so is a fatal misdirection.
(iii) Applicable principles for grounding a conviction on circumstantial evidence are (a) the evidence must be incapable of more than one interpretation (b) the fact from which an inference of guilt or adverse to the accused is sought to be drawn, must be proved beyond reasonable doubt with the facts from which the inference is to be drawn or inferred. (c) In murder cases, evidence should be cogent and compelling as to convince a jury, judge or Court that upon no rational hypothesis other than murder can the facts be accounted for.