Mustapha Maulidi Rashidi versus The Republic; Criminal Appeal No 241 of 2014: Court of Appeal of Tanzania at Mtwara (Unreported).
- Criminal Law
- Doctrine of recent possession – what are the ingredients.
- Evidence
- Circumstantial evidence – under what circumstances the court may rely on it to enter conviction?.
Held:-
(i) For the doctrine of recent possession to apply as a basis of conviction it must be proved, first, that the property was found with the suspect; second, the property is positively proved to be the property of the complainant; Third, that the property was recently stolen from the complainant and lastly, that the stolen thing constitutes the subject of the charge against the accused... The fact that the accused does not claim to be the owner of the property does not relieve the prosecution to prove the above elements.
(ii) In a case depending conclusively upon circumstantial evidence, the court must, before deciding upon a conviction, find that the exculpatory facts are incompatible with the innocence of the accused and incapable of explanation upon any other reasonable hypothesis than that of guilt.
(iii) It is also necessary before drawing the inference of the accused’s guilt from circumstantial evidence to be sure that there are no other co-existing circumstances which would weaken or destroy the inference.
(iv) In order to ground a conviction on circumstantial evidence it must be incapable of more than one interpretation.