• The High Court dismissed their theory, finding that the two had ill-intentions to beat and injure the man. They were convicted and sentenced in 2020.
• The two appealed the conviction and sentence but it was dismissed on December 15, 2023, when the Court of Appeal found that evidence by the nine witnesses was solid to seal their fate.
Image: FILE
The Court of Appeal has upheld a 10-year sentence for two police officers who beat a man to death in Elgeyo Marakwet in 2011.
According to court documents, the two police officers spotted a man they knew walk into a bar at night and followed him.
They then pretended they were interested in watching the 9pm news and demanded that the man buys them a drink. When he refused, they beat him to death.
The court documents show that Julius Yator Biwott had decided to unwind at a local pub in his Elgeyo Marakwet after a long day at work before proceeding home.
The man was later joined by two police officers, Rodgers Wasiwa Watulo and Antony Mukokha, who demanded that he buys them a drink but he shouted out that the two men were a nuisance in their demand. This caught the attention of the bartender.
Gladys Jepkemboi Bomett, a bartender at the Emirates Bar at Kapyego centre where the incident happened, testified that on the material day, Biwott went to her bar and shortly after, the two police officers came in and asked the deceased to buy them beer but he declined.
Biwott then left the bar and the two men followed him. She closed the bar at about 11pm and on stepping out, the officers directed torch light at her and ordered her to stop.
She said she also saw Biwott. It was at that juncture that Mukokha slapped Biwott in the face and held him by the collar of his jacket. The two officers then wrestled him to the ground and Mukokha sat on him as Watulo used the butt of his rifle to hit him in the head.
Biwott screamed until he fell unconscious and that is when the bartender ran to her house.
When the two finally called a nurse to have the man attended to, he was in a coma and they took him a local chief’s camp, instead of a hospital. The man died the following morning.
A postmortem conducted on June 23, 2011, at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital showed that Biwott’s nails had turned blue due to lack of oxygen.
He had bruises on both knees and blood was oozing from his nostrils. There were two lacerations on the left side of the skull near the centre and the body had no defensive wounds.
The doctor formed the opinion that he died as a result of raised intracranial pressure due to intracranial bleeding as a result of blunt force trauma.
In their defence, the two officers said they had gone to the bar to watch the 9pm news. They said that at about 9.15pm, they left to prepare for night patrol within Kapyego trading centre and when they started at about midnight, they met three people dressed in black jumpers.
They said two of the three fled when they directed their spotlights at them. The one who remained behind was the deceased and upon being questioned, he pounced on one of the officers overpowering him, they alleged.
They also claimed that Biwott snatched a gun from one of them and a struggle ensued leading to them beating him up.
The High Court dismissed their theory, finding that the two had ill-intentions to beat and injure the man. They were convicted and sentenced in 2020.
The two appealed the conviction and sentence but it was dismissed on December 15, 2023, when the Court of Appeal found that evidence by the nine witnesses was solid to seal their fate.
The Court of Appeal upheld their respective 10- year jail term.