Serial killer, Richard Arinaitwe is smiling ear to ear after Court of Appeal judged quashed the life sentence handed to him for murdering American Volunteer, Cecelia Goetz.
The decision was taken by a panel of three Court of Appeal Justices Ezekiel Muhanguzi, Helen Obura and Elizabeth Musoke, who set aside the life sentence and instead handed Arinaitwe a 30 year jail term.
The judges however deducted five years and three months Arinaitwe spent on remand from 1998 to 2003 when he was convicted and directed prison authorities to start counting the remaining 24 years and nine months from 2003.
Arinaitwe will now serve only eight years since he has been in jail for sixteen years following his conviction in 2003 after he was found guilty of murdering, Goetz who was in Uganda to follow up on HIV/AIDS funds.
Arinaitwe had been sentenced to death by High Court Judge, Kagaba Rwamisazi. He however benefited from the Supreme Court decision in 2009, which stated that whoever had not been executed after five years in prison should have his or her sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Arinaitwe appeared before Justice Joseph Murangira who substituted his death sentence to life imprisonment.
The convict, through his lawyer, Elizabeth Asiimwe, petitioned the Court of Appeal to quash the life imprisonment sentence or reduce it. The lawyer told court her client represented himself in High Court presided over by Rwamisazi yet he didn’t have sufficient legal knowledge to challenge the evidence that was laid before court.
In their judgment read by the Court of Appeal Registrar, Jesse Byaruhanga this afternoon, the Court of Appeal Justices faulted the lower court for failure to consider Arinaitwe’s age by the time he committed the crime, and noted that he was just a young man who was remorseful and had just joined Makerere University to pursue his Bachelors of Law degree.
"He was a young man and also a hardened criminal and his age was a very big mitigating factor, which was never considered at sentencing,” said Byaruhanga.
They added that the convict needs a rehabilitative sentence so that he can go back to the community. The Judges also considered records from Luzira Prisons indicating that Arinaitwe has participated in a number of rehabilitations programs and is remorseful.
