Thread by @Kauswe3

Zambian President’s Son Sentenced to Death for Killing Woman

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14 October 1991. The youngest son of President Kenneth Kaunda was sentenced to death for killing a woman in September 1989. President Kaunda could not issue a pardon unless he won that month’s toughly contested presidential election.

Kambarage Kaunda, 27, stared impassively behind dark glasses at the judge who sentenced him to death by hanging.

Kaunda then raised his hand in the ″V″ for victory salute of his father’s ruling United National Independence Party and was led away to jail to await the outcome of his appeal.

Kenneth Kaunda, in the political fight of his life in presidential elections Oct. 31, was not in court at the time.

Legal experts said any presidential pardon for the younger Kaunda could come only after the Supreme Court decided whether to hear an appeal and then on the outcome. The process, attorneys said, would likely take several weeks.

Details of the incident in question was that Kambarange with a passenger, was driving through Kamanga Compound in Lusaka around midnight on 3 September 1989

He drove past a group of people who were walking in the same direction on the road as he himself was traveling; he did so at speed and stopped immediately after them.

One of the passengers in his car then alighted and fired a shotgun in the air. Kambarange also alighted and fired four shots in the air with a pistol.

He then lowered the aim of his pistol and fired three more shots close over the heads of the people in the group so that one shot killed the deceased (Tabeth Mwansa) by striking her in the back of the head.

At his murder trial Kambarage Kaunda insisted he was innocent, saying he fired in self-defense when he and a friend in a car were surrounded in a Lusaka suburb by a crowd of angry people.

The judge, Claver Musumali, upgraded the original charge from manslaughter to murder upon examining evidence in the case.

The judge concluded that neither the younger Kaunda nor his companion were injured and their car had not been damaged, showing ″they had not been attacked or threatened of being attacked.″

However, the decision by the Supreme Court in 1992 to allow the appeal of Kambarange Kaunda caused a legal storm

While the Kaunda family praised the decision as "a triumph of justice", public opinion was seemingly unanimous in condemning it as a monstrous miscarriage of justice.

The late Director of Public Prosecutions, Francis mwinga, after examining the docket ruled that Kaunda had no case to answer "since he shot in self defence".

On appeal it was Held that:

1.That in view of the D.P.P.'s public statement that the appellant would not be prosecuted for homicide on the ground of self-defence, the right to prosecute thereafter was lost for the reasons already given

2. That as the prosecution eye witnesses were relatives or friends of the deceased and could, therefore, well have had a possible bias against the Kabarange

3. That the learned trial judge misdirected himself by applying improper test in his assessment of the credibility of the prosecution eye witnesses most of whom were found to have told lies on certain issues including as to the amount of alcohol they had consumed;

4. That the appellant acted in self-defence and was, therefore, not guilty of murder

Credit: zambialii, jstor & apnews