The Supreme Court on January 12, commenced hearing an appeal by the Attorney General (AG) challenging orders of the Constitutional Court that halted several corruption prosecutions against Kazinda. However, through his lawyers, Kazinda argues that the appeal was lodged beyond the mandatory 60-day period provided under the Constitution, rendering it incompetent.
Kazinda contends that he remains in prison based on what he describes as an invalid appeal incapable of producing any legal consequences. He has urged the court to strike it out and order his immediate release. Proceedings took a dramatic turn when the Supreme Court, chaired by Justice Lillian Tibatemwa Ekirikubinza, revealed a critical omission in the Constitutional Court judgment that forms the basis of the appeal. Nearly six years after the judgment was delivered, the Supreme Court noted that one of the five justices who heard and determined Kazinda’s constitutional petition did not sign the decision. Justice Tibatemwa explained that the omission related to Justice Ezekiel Muhanguzi, who had by then been elevated to the Supreme Court and did not append his signature to the judgment.
The court directed lawyers for both Kazinda and the Attorney General to address a key legal question: whether the failure by one judge to sign a judgment renders that decision invalid in law. The Supreme Court is expected to receive submissions from both sides and determine the legal effect of the omission, and the fate of the Attorney General’s appeal by February 12. Kazinda is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for corruption-related offences. He maintains that both his conviction and sentence are unlawful, arguing that the Constitutional Court had barred any prosecutions arising from the same investigations that led to his conviction.
Kazinda’s favour
In August 2020, the Constitutional Court, by a majority decision in Constitutional Petition No 30 of 2014 (Geoffrey Kazinda Vs Attorney General), ruled in his favour. The court ordered a permanent stay of proceedings in several pending criminal cases and barred the State from initiating or continuing any future prosecutions founded on the same facts arising from his tenure at the Office of the Prime Minister. Following the decision, the Anti-Corruption Court discontinued Criminal Case No 047 of 2013 and permanently stayed Criminal Case No 056 of 2018 after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) failed to justify continued prosecution.
However, Kazinda says the situation changed when the Attorney General filed Constitutional Application No 27 of 2020 in the Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution of the Constitutional Court judgment pending appeal. He claims the application was supported by affidavits that misrepresented his discontinued cases as merely ‘stalled.’ Although he raised a preliminary objection challenging the competence of the intended appeal, the Supreme Court, on February 12, 2021, granted a stay of execution and directed the Attorney General to file the appeal without delay. Kazinda now argues that the DPP relied on that stay to resume prosecutions in cases that had already been lawfully discontinued, a move he says violated the Constitutional Court’s orders.
In an affidavit supporting his application, Kazinda recounts a legal battle spanning more than a decade. He states that before his interdiction in August 2012, he served for 18 years as a civil servant under the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, and later spent five years as principal accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister. He says he faced multiple prosecutions before the Anti-Corruption Court between 2012 and 2018, resulting in convictions in some cases, while others remained pending.