High Court acquits Binga woman accused of killing child with disability

A 23-year-old woman from Binga who had been accused of killing her six-year-old daughter living with a disability has been acquitted by the High Court.

Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Evangelista Kabasa, sitting on circuit in Hwange, ruled that the accused, Melody Mwiinde, could not be held criminally liable as her actions were carried out under imminent threats of death. The court upheld her defence of self-compulsion, finding that she acted under serious and immediate danger to her life.

“The State had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused acted with free will or criminal intent, a key requirement for a murder conviction. The accused is acquitted,” Justice Kabasa ruled.
Mwiinde had been facing a murder charge following the death of her daughter, Precious Mwiinde, on 23 April last year.

Prosecutor Mrs Martha Cheda told the court that Mwiinde strangled the child with a copper cable sheath at Sango Conservancy near her family’s fields in Chief Siabuwa, Binga.

After the incident, Mwiinde initially told her grandfather, Mr Edson Sibanda, that goblins had killed the child in the bush. She later confessed to relatives, including her aunt Ms Simukai Sibanda and grandmother Ms Juliet December, before leading them to the body which had been concealed in a makeshift field hut. Police investigations subsequently recovered the alleged murder weapon following indications made by the accused.

A post-mortem examination confirmed the cause of death and formed part of the State’s evidence. However, Mwiinde, who was represented by Mhaka Attorneys, pleaded not guilty and raised a defence of compulsion.

She testified that her father had raped her, resulting in the birth of the child, whom he repeatedly rejected. The court heard that her father issued threats to kill both her and the child if she failed to comply with his demand that the minor be killed. On the day of the incident, he allegedly warned that he would poison them if she refused.

Her legal practitioners submitted that she reasonably believed the threats would be executed and that she acted in fear for her own life.

“She reasonably believed the threats would be carried out and acted out of fear for her own life,” argued Mwiinde’s lawyers.