Court Upholds Death Sentence of Prison Beauty Queen Ruth Kamande

The Appeals Court has upheld the death sentence of Miss Lang’ata Prison 2016, Ruth Wanjiru Kamande.

Kamande was in 2018 found guilty of murdering her boyfriend Farid Mohammed (24) by stabbing him 22 times at his house in Nairobi’s Buruburu estate in 2015 in a suspected case of love gone sour.

“Having carefully examined the evidence on record, we find the conclusion that the appellant violently, intentionally and unlawfully killed the deceased inescapable. On our own analysis, we find no fault and agree entirely with the learned Judge’s finding,” the Court of Appeal ruled.

The beauty queen was convicted by High Court Justice Jessie Lessit, who handed her a death sentence.

“The accused inflicted each stab, not in a frenzy as she alleged in her defense, but deliberately and intermittently. Her action was calculated to inflict pain and cause death slowly but assuredly. That is clear proof of malice, of spite, callousness, and hatred,” Justice Lessit ruled adding that she lacked remorse.

During the trial, Kamande told the court that she found a hospital card which indicated that Mohammed was undergoing HIV treatment. 

After confronting him, she said the boyfriend threatened to rape and kill her, leading to an argument. Kamande said she stabbed him with a kitchen knife after it fell on her as they wrestled on the ground.

But the judge dismissed the accused’s claims that she committed the offense in self-defense, saying the number of stabs on the deceased body failed to support her position.

Mohammed succumbed to multiple stab wounds on his back, stomach, chest, and neck while undergoing treatment.

The defense lawyer had urged the court to give Kamande a lenient sentence arguing that she had “established a close relationship with God” since she was taken into custody in 2015.

The lawyer further said his client had converted to Islam and has been praying five times daily. The advocate also presented that Kamande had enrolled for a theology course at the prison, an indication that she was a changed person.

He also told the court that Kamande was the only child to her single mum and that she had enrolled for a course at a local university prior to her arrest in 2015.

“When arrested, the 21 yeas old then had just been enrolled at JKUAT to study Business, a dream which was shuttered by the circumstances herein,” the lawyer said.