Bwanga v People (Appeal 78 of 2017) [2018] ZMSC 593 (11 July 2018)

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF ZAMBIA Appeal No. 78/2017 HOLDEN AT KABWE (Criminal Jurisdiction) CORAM: Musonda, Kabuka and Chinyama, JJS; On 10th April, 2018 and 11th July, 2018. FOR THE APPELLANT: Mrs. M. K. Liswaniso, Legal Aid Counsel, Legal Aid Board. FOR THE RESPONDENT: Ms. M. K. Chitundu, Deputy Chief State Advocate, National Prosecutions Authority. JUDGMENT KABUKA, JS, delivered the Judgment of the Court. Cases referred to: 1. Ilunga Kabala and John Masefu v The People (1981) ZR 102 (SC). 2. David Zulu v The People (1977) ZR 151 (SC). A. Chimbo v The People (1982) ZR 20 (SC). J2 ' 4. Dorothy Mutale and Richard Phiri v The People (1997) ZR 1 (SC). 5. Yokoniya Mwale v The People, Appeal No. 205/ 2014. 6. The People v Antifellow Chigabba SJNo. 54/2017. 7. Sikaona v The People, Appeal No. 129 of 2011. 8. George Musupi v The People (1978) ZR 271 (S. C.). 9. Kambarange Mpundu Kaunda v The People (1990) ZR 215 (SC). •10. Nyambe Mukefia v The People (Appeal No. 128/2001/) [2012] ZMSC 34. 11. Guardic Kameya Kavwana SC v The People, Appeal No. 84/2015. 12. D. P. P v Kilbourne (1973) 1 All ER 440. 13. R v Makanjuola and R v Easton (1995) 3 All ER 730. Legislation referred to: The Penal Code Cap. 87 SS. 200, 204 (a). Other Works referred to: Halsbury’s Laws of England, 5th Edition, Volume 28, 2015 Criminal Procedure, Lexis Nexis, Butterworths. This appeal by the appellant is against a judgment of the High Court sitting at Mansa which convicted him of the offence of murder and sentenced him to death. The facts of the case are that, the appellant who finished serving a prison sentence was released from Mansa Prison at around 09:00 hours on the 1st of September, 2012. His wife, the deceased, with J3 whom the appellant had seven children, was looking forward to his « release. To ensure a special welcome, she went out of her way to try and borrow some money Trom her sister to enable her buy food and prepare the appellant a home cooked meal. The deceased’s sister who testified as PW5 at the trial in the I I I I court below, was aware the appellant harboured ill intentions towards his wife as each time the deceased visited him in prison, she would complain that the appellant was uttering threats on her life on account of information he said he had received, that his wife had taken to heavy drinking. It was for the said reason that PW5 dissuaded the deceased from buying any particular food or to go out to meet the appellant upon his release. The deceased heeded her sister’s advice and spent the rest of the day at the home of her said sister until 16:00 hours when the latter left her to take a nap. It is then, that the deceased left her sister’s house and accompanied her friend Memory who was with her boyfriend Vincent Mulenga Mwansa, (PW2) to a local bar dabbed ‘Mwa Lungu’, which was located some 100 metres away. After having a drink, they / J4 decided to switch location and went to another pub known as Kambili /bar. A short while later, they left this bar as well. • As they were walking away, the trio noticed a'man perched oh an anthill on the other side of the road. Upon seeing them, the man got up and started coming down, heading in their direction. When the deceased recognised him she exclaimed, “there is my husband!” She then, ran to where he was and joyously embraced him. The appellant’s response was, however, hostile. He first kicked her, which caused her to fall to the ground where he pounced on her, beating her with fists. When PW2 attempted to intervene to stop the beating, the appellant threw a metal object at him which struck him in the face, causing him to bleed profusely. Deflated, PW2 just stood by and watched as the appellant continued battering the deceased. A while later, PW2 decided to leave for his girlfriend’s home, where he spent the night. The next morning, PW2’s girlfriend and himself came to learn that the deceased had been murdered. The only other eye witness to the incident who testified in the court below was PW3, Aaron Makasa, a brother to the deceased. His J5 evidence was that, he was at Kambili bar when his sister, the deceased, came there in the company of PW2 and his late girlfriend, Memory. PW3 then got up to go to the toilet and upon his return, found a crowd of people had gathered by the roadside. He proceeded to check what was going on and found it was the appellant who was • III beating his sister. When he tried to enquire on the reasons for the beating, the appellant responded with insults and PW3’s efforts to try and stop him, were frustrated when he was captured by the appellant’s friends. Thereafter, PW3 saw the appellant leave with the deceased, whilst demanding that they proceed to the deceased home to retrieve his belongings. After the couple left, the appellant’s friends let go of PW3. He then linked up with PW5 who was with her husband and they attempted to look for the deceased but did not find her. PW3 and his said brother-in-law continued the search the following morning and, in the process, somewhere near the stream, they met with the appellant who was carrying a sack. Upon seeing them, the appellant, according to PW3, told them that he had stabbed the deceased and J6 perforated her eyes and while he was talking, a knife dropped from * > « * 1 * > his pocket. ■ In view of what the appellant had told them, PW3 and his brother-in-law went to check for the deceased at the hospital and also made,inquiries from the police station but both efforts yielded nothing. Later, they heard people saying a dead body had been found in a ditch. PW1, PW4 and PW5 also gave evidence in the trial court below on how they were alerted to the beating of the deceased by the appellant. PW1, the appellant’s grandmother testified to the effect that, the appellant had briefly visited her home on the material day and was accompanied by his sister and “another woman”. In the evening, after PW1 had retired to bed, she was awoken from sleep by someone shouting that she should go and counsel “John” (the appellant) to stop beating his wife. PW1 went out as requested but was informed that the appellant and his wife, had since gone to the police. At around midnight, she was woken up again. This time it was by the J7 appellant himself who was asking her for some food, but whilst < '. » •, < waiting for it to cook, the appellant fell asleep in the veranda of her home. At some point during the course of the night, the appellant woke up PW1 again, to tell her that he was leaving to go and pursue someone who owed him money. PW1 advised the appellant to wait till day break, and when it got to about 06:00 hours, she inquired from him as to why he had beaten up his wife the previous night. According to PW1, the appellant’s response was that, he beat up his wife because he found her drinking beer at Kambili bar. He further told PW1 that, thereafter, they decided to go to the police station together but while on their way, they were attacked by two men upon which the deceased run away. Following this narration, the appellant left PWl’s home. In the course of the same morning, as PW1 was sitting outside her house basking in the sun, police came to the village. The reason for their presence shortly became clear when she heard people saying a dead body had been dumped in a ditch some 50 metres away. This J8 body was also about 90 metres from where the fight involving her grandson, the appellant, had taken place the previous night. According to (PW4), Annie Kambobe; in the evening of 1st September, 2012, she was in her home when she heard noise coming from outside and people saying “John is beating his wife. ” Since the appellant was known to be a violent person in the village, she was scared to venture out in the dark to see what was going on and instead decided to go to bed. The following morning, her children and their friends went to play in a ditch which was left from excavating soil for making bricks. The eldest aged 5, came running back to inform her that there was a big snake there. When PW4 and other concerned adults went outside to see this snake, they found it was actually the dead body of a human being, with the head and upper part covered in a sack. This bizarre finding was immediately reported to the police who promptly came to collect the body. PW4, said the body was found some 25 metres away from her home and about 50 metres from that of the appellant’s grandmother. J9 The Investigating Officer, PW7, in his evidence said that he received a report of suspected murder in the morning of 2nd September, 2012. They then went to Musumali village to investigate the matter with other officers. At the scene, they found a ditch full of leaves with the body of a woman clad in blood stained underwear only, lying underneath. The head was covered in a sack which they removed and PW7 observed it had a deep cut below the left eye and the face was also covered in blood. The neck was dangling loosely, a sign that it was broken and the body which was identified as that of Getrude Mwape Bwanga, was taken to Mansa hospital mortuary. Further investigations conducted in the matter revealed that the appellant had just been released from prison and he was seen beating the deceased who was his wife the previous night. Efforts were made to trace the appellant but he was nowhere to be found, from 2nd September, 2012 until the 8th of July, 2013, when a message was received from Luanshya police notifying PW7 that they had arrested the appellant on a charge of theft. The appellant was brought back to Mansa, where he was charged for the murder of the deceased. J10 PW7 further testified that, the distance from the deceased’s home was 3% kilometres from where her body was found. That Kambili bar was also about 250 metres away from the body; while the house of the appellant’s grandmother was just 50 meters away. According to PW7, the appellant denied knowing the deceased or t i • • • anything to do with her death. In his own defence to the charge, the appellant said that his wife was Freda Ngosa and that the prison visitor’s book would confirm that this was the person who visited him as his wife. Upon his release from prison on 1st September, 2012 at 09:00 hours he found her waiting for him in the prison visitor’s room and they went home together. At around 17:00 hours, he visited his grandmother in the company of his said wife and his sister. A short while thereafter, he escorted the wife to his sister’s place where she was staying during the period of his incarceration. At around 19:00 hours the appellant met someone who owed him money and they got into an argument. Since he knew where the person lived, he decided to see him the following morning and went JU back to his grandmother’s house. He arrived there at 21:00 hours and asked for some food but fell asleep in the veranda before the food was ready. When he woke up at 06:00 hours, he told his grandmother he was going to see a person who owed him money and left. Luckily, he did find the said person, got his money and there and then decided I • < • to take his wife Freda Ngosa, who is a fishmonger, to Luanshya where they stayed with the appellant’s mother for a month, until he was arrested on a charge of being found in possession of stolen property. The appellant denied ever beating the deceased. He also denied that in the morning of 2nd September, 2012 his grandmother had asked him whether he had beaten his wife, but admitted that there was no reason his own grandmother would tell lies against him. He further admitted, that he had seven children with the deceased even though upon his release from prison he had not bothered to visit them or the funeral home of their mother. After thoroughly considering the whole of this evidence, the learned trial judge found that, the death of the deceased had been established from the testimony of the prosecution witnesses who saw J12 the body and that it was also confirmed by the post-mortem report. According to the judge, what was in issue, was whether it was the • ‘ > * • appellant who caused the death of the deceased and if he did so unlawfully and with malice aforethought. ,The learned juc^ge found that, oply PW2 and PW,3 had witnessed, the beating of the deceased. That PW3 could not have been mistaken in his identification of the appellant when he said he saw him kick and beat the deceased on the material day, as the appellant was his brother-in-law who was well known to him even before the incident in issue. The court also found that PW3 was aided in his observation by evidence which established that there was sufficient light coming from a church and a nearby bar. The judge considered it an odd coincidence: the evidence of PW3 that when his brother-in-law and himself met the appellant near a stream, he was carrying a sack; and that, the deceased’s body was subsequently found partially covered in a sack. In further analysis of the evidence of PW2 and PW3, the judge found the sharp object which the accused used to injure PW2 must J13 have been the same one that he used to stab the deceased near the eye; and that this object was the knife PW3 saw drop from the appellant’s pocket when they met him by the stream. The judge noted that her findings were fortified by the post-mortem report which stated that the deceased had a deep cut measuring 6cm x 3cm below I I I • • the left eye. The judge also considered the evidence from PW4 as another odd coincidence, that he heard people saying the appellant, ‘John’, was beating his wife; the following morning the body of the appellant’s wife, the deceased in this appeal, was found in a ditch about 50 metres away from the house of his grandmother where the appellant had spent the night in the veranda. The judge observed that, when his grandmother, PW1, later asked him about the reports of the beating, the appellant admitted to her that he had beaten up his wife, the deceased, because he found her drinking. The learned trial judge also pointed to the inconsistency in the appellant’s testimony, when he told his grandmother, PW1, that the deceased had been in his company but run away when they were J14 attacked by two unknown men. When giving his evidence in court however, the appellant just denied beating up the deceased, saying he had no reason for doing so. On the whole of the evidence, the court reasoned that, it was strange that the appellant’s own grandmother, whom he was close to, did not know his alleged wife Freda Ngosa and failed to recognise her when the appellant went with her to PWl’s home. The judge found that, the failure by PW1 to recognise Freda Ngosa only went to confirm that the appellant’s wife was in actual fact the deceased, whom he had beaten to death. The judge found the reason the appellant disappeared until he was brought back by the police after he was apprehended in Luanshya was because he was running away from being arrested for killing his wife, the deceased. In the premises, that his explanation that he did not beat up the deceased because she was not his wife was not true. The court relied on case of Ilunga Kabala and John Masefu v The People.1 J15 The learned trial judge discounted the assertion made by the defence that PW2 and PW3 were suspect witnesses. Her finding was that, PW2 was infact an independent witness who left the scene whilst the appellant was still beating the deceased. As such, that his . evidence corroborated that of .the deceased’s brother, PW3. On the totality of the evidence, the learned judge was satisfied that apart from the direct evidence from eyewitnesses, PW2 and PW3, the circumstantial evidence against the appellant of his involvement in causing the death of the deceased was strong and had taken the case out of the realm of conjecture to attain such a degree of cogency which permitted only an inference of guilt on the part of the appellant. She cited as authority for the finding, the case of David Zulu v The People2. On the basis of the post-mortem report which revealed that the deceased had died from strangulation and fracture of the cervical spine, resulting in dangling of the neck from her body, the trial judge concluded that, by inflicting such injuries, the appellant had the intention of causing the deceased’s death. That malice aforethought J16 was thus established as required by section 204 (a) of the Penal • * * « Code. The court further found no evidence suggesting that the appellant had any lawful justification for killing the deceased and that the evidence also disclosed no extenuating circumstances. The appellant was accordingly found guilty of the offence of murder contrary to section 200 of the Penal Code and was sentenced to death. He now appeals against both his conviction and sentence on the following grounds: 1. The trial judge erred in law and fact when she convicted the appellant on the uncorroborated evidence of suspect witnesses, namely Vincent Mulenga Mwansa, PW2 and Aaron Makasa PW3. 2. The trial judge erred in law and fact when she held that the circumstantial evidence adduced by the State had taken the case out of the realm of conjecture to attaining a degree of cogency which only permitted an inference of guilt. The gist of the arguments on ground one as contained in the heads of argument filed by the appellant is that, the evidence of PW2 and PW3 ought to be treated with caution as suspect witnesses in the death of the deceased with interests of their own to serve, as they were amongst the last persons to see the deceased alive. The J17 submission was that, the evidence of a suspect witness cannot be corroborated by the evidence of another suspect witness, unless they are suspect for different reasons and the case of Chimbo and Others v The People3 was cited as authority for the submission. Counsel . went on to submit that, despite the post-mortem report revealing the deceased’s death was caused by acute cardiac arrest due to strangulation and fracture of the cervical spine, the evidence led shows that no one saw the appellant strangle the deceased. Under ground two, the submission was that, guilt was not the only inference that could be drawn from the circumstantial evidence adduced by the prosecution, as the only evidence of the alleged violence of the appellant came from the same suspect witnesses who had their own interests to serve. Counsel urged this Court to consider that, the deceased could have been attacked and murdered by unknown people. The case of Dorothy Mutale and Richard Phiri v The People4 was called in aid of the proposition that, where two or more inferences are possible, the court should adopt the one more favourable to the accused if there is nothing in the case to exclude it. J18 The submission in conclusion was that, the explanation given by the appellant was reasonable. In response to ground one of the appeal faulting the trial court for having convicted the appellant on alleged uncorroborated • I • I evidence of suspect witnesses, the state argued that, the appellant was someone PW2 and PW3 both knew before the incident and at the scene, there was enough light from a church and a bar which were on either side. They could, therefore, not have been mistaken in identifying him. Further, that PW2 and PW3 testified as to what they personally saw, which was the beating of the deceased by the appellant and that they had both unsuccessfully tried to intervene and stop this beating. PW3 even had a physical confrontation with the appellant when he pushed the appellant, who then fell to the ground. Thereafter, PW3 testified that the appellant stood up from where he had fallen and lifted his wife, the deceased from where she too had fallen and he then saw the couple leave together and that was the last time he saw the deceased alive. J19 The submission in this respect, was that, the mere fact that PW3 was the deceased’s brother does not warrant his evidence being treated as suspect, when it was not shown that he had any bias or motive to falsely implicate the appellant, who was his brother-in-law or indeed, that he had .any other interest of his own to serve in the matter. Decisions of this Court in Yokoniya Mwale v The People 5 and The People v Antifellow Chigabba 6 were relied upon for the submission. On ground two, where the appellant contended that the circumstantial evidence was weak to warrant his conviction, the State advocate submitted that, the court below was on firm ground to convict the appellant as the evidence led against him was overwhelming. She highlighted the findings made by the trial court on the evidence of witnesses and various unexplained odd coincidences as set out earlier in this judgment. The State advocate stressed that, PW2 and PW3 testified to have witnessed the appellant beating up the deceased. She also noted that, according to PW3, after beating up the deceased, the appellant left the scene with her and when PW3 tried to follow them up, he could not find them. The , deceased was therefore last seen alive whilst in the company of the J20 appellant. It was further argued that, there was more than sufficient evidence on record which shows that the appellant beat the deceased near a bar. When the appellant’s grandmother later asked him about the whereabouts of his wife, the appellant told her that when he was going to the police station with the deceased, they met two young men on the way who started beating him. That he fought with those young men, but the deceased managed to run away. The appellant when giving evidence in defence however, made no mention of this attack on him, but merely denied having beaten the deceased on the ground that, he had no reason to beat her as she was no longer his wife at the material time. In conclusion, the submissions on the point were that, the appellant did not advance any reasonable explanation to rebut the overwhelming evidence against him. That what he explained to the court in his defence could not reasonably be true in light of this evidence; and that of the odd coincidences highlighted by the trial J21 court; which provide supporting evidence against the appellant, that he indeed killed his wife in cold blood and with malice aforethought. That this is confirmed by the post-mortem report which gives the cause of death as strangulation. The case of Sikaona v The People7 was referred to so far. as this case restates the prinoiple that, odd coincidences if unexplained may be supporting evidence, in that they provide a connecting link of an accused to the commission of the offence. We have considered the arguments and submissions from both counsel as well as the case law to which we were referred. As we see it, this appeal rests on the answer to the question, whether on the circumstantial evidence adduced before the trial court as appears on the record, it can be said that it was the appellant who killed the deceased. The appellant contends that, the trial judge should not have convicted him based on the evidence of suspect witnesses PW2 and PW3, who were the only eye witnesses to the beating of the deceased. J22 In addressing that argument, suffice to say, it is now accepted that a suspect witness will ordinarily fall into an identified category, such as an accomplice, victims in sexual assault cases or children who give evidence on oath. In this regard, we did in the case of . Musupi v the People8 acknowledge the observations made by. Lord Hailsham in R v Kilbourne, to that effect. In Kambarage Mpundu Kaunda v The People9, another category of suspect witnesses was added, as having a possible interest of their own to serve. These were prosecution witnesses who are friends or relatives of the deceased or victims or indeed both, as we held in Chigabba6. The suggestion by counsel for the appellant in the present appeal however, is that PW2 and PW3 should be considered as suspect witnesses purely on the ground that they were among the group of the last people to see the deceased alive. We are at a loss to appreciate this proposition and no authority has been cited by counsel to support it. As we have said in numerous past decisions of this Court, amongst them Mukena v The People10; Guardic Kamaya Kiavwana v The People11; Yokoniya Mwale5; and Chigabba6, the last two of which were relied on by the State, it is not J23 sufficient to merely point to the category of the witness which qualifies him to be a suspect witness. Nor, does a mere suggestion by Counsel in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, that they are suspect witnesses, qualify them as such or constitute a credible basis • on which the trial court can .find that the witnesses are indeed * I suspect witnesses. A claim that a witness is a suspect witness who has an interest of his own to serve must be supported by a substratum of facts to support that assertion. We have said before, that the real test or critical consideration in such circumstances is whether or not the evidence led discloses that the suspect witness may, in addition, also have a motive to give false evidence against the accused. Once in the circumstances of the case this is reasonably possible, or to borrow the words of Lord Hailsham in D. P. P v Kilbourne12, "can reasonably be suggested", the danger of false implication is present and must be excluded before a conviction can be held to be safe. In R v Makanjuola; and R v Easton13 it was held that, whether the judge chooses to give a warning (in respect of a suspect witness) and in what terms, will depend on the circumstances of the particular J24 case, the issues raised, the content and quality of the witness’s evidence and whether there is an evidential basis for contending, that the evidence of the witness may be unreliable and this goes beyond a mere suggestion made through cross-examination by -counsel. Accordingly, we do not accept the suggestion made by counsel for the appellant in the present appeal, that since the two eye witnesses PW2 and PW3 admitted to have been with or seen the deceased on the fateful day, they should be considered suspects in her murder. We say so, as there is nothing in the evidence on record, either to confirm that position or even remotely suggest the possibility that they were in any way involved in causing her death or that they may have had some other motive to give false evidence against the appellant. We also note that the appellant did not raise this allegation in his defence. The reason for the omission is clear to us, for his evidence was that he did not see PW2 or PW3 on the material day. The appellant instead adamantly claimed he was never at the scene from where the deceased was battered and that he had no reason for beating her, since she was not his wife. J25 In sharp contrast to his said position however, the record shows there were other witnesses, PW1, PW4 and PW5 whose evidence connected him to the battering of the deceased. And, there is nothing in their testimonies to suggest that they were telling untruths or .making up stories to protect• their own interests. The appellant equally did not lead any evidence at the trial to suggest so, nor was any evidence led from which any such motive could be deduced. This is more so, in respect of PW2, who from the evidence on record and as the learned judge rightly pointed out, was an independent witness. Even assuming that PW2 was a friend of the deceased, there was also independent evidence of PW1, the appellant’s own grandmother. According to her, she was earlier in the night woken up to go and intervene in the beating of the deceased by the appellant, but found them gone. Later, around midnight, the appellant returned to her home looking for food and he ended up spending the night in the veranda of her home. The appellant was in such a hurry to leave the village that he wanted to go in the night and she had to persuade him to at least wait until day break. At 06:00 hours, in answer to his grandmother’s query on what the reported beating was all about, the J26 appellant confirmed to her, that he beat up the deceased because he * ’ * , ’ > *. found her drinking at Kambili bar; which was also the evidence of PW2 and PW3, who were both eye witnesses to the incident. As the appellant himself in his evidence admitted, his fill grandmother, PW1, did not have any interest to serve in the matter and hence, no motive to falsely implicate him. What this means is that, even if we were to accept the appellant’s contention that PW2 and PW3 must indeed be treated as suspect witnesses, which we do not, PWl’s independent testimony corroborates their evidence when they testified that, it is the appellant they saw brutalise the deceased in the night and the following morning her dead body was recovered from a ditch just 50 metres from where the appellant had spent the night in the verandah of his grandmother’s house. The Learned authors of Halsbury’s Laws of England, 5th Edition, paragraph 541, on the modern approach to what amounts to corroboration state that: “Much of the law concerning what evidence may or may not suffice as corroboration is derived from cases concerning evidence given on behalf of the prosecution by children, accomplices of the defendant or complainants in cases of sexual offences. Strict corroboration warnings were once mandatory in respect of such evidence, but such J27 requirements have now been abrogated, and in consequence, the <, importance of such evidence of a kind that would previously have been considered capable of providing corroboration will however remain capable of providing independent support for any evidence that might be considered suspect or unreliable in the absence of such support. Where for example, the evidence of one witness might be doubted, the independent evidence of two or more might be considered worthy of belief.” (underlining for emphasjs supplied) , Against that backdrop of the approach to corroboration in recent times, when the findings of the trial court below are considered holistically, they show that the learned judge, in addition to the direct evidence of PW2 and PW3, that they witnessed the beating of the deceased by the appellant at Kambili bar which was sufficient to be relied upon, the judge also relied on the independent evidence of PW1 that the appellant told her he beat up his wife at Kambili bar because he found her drinking. She further took into account a number of odd coincidences which as she rightly pointed out, were unexplained by the appellant and thus constituted further supporting evidence. These odd coincidences go to show that the appellant did not take kindly to finding that his wife had taken to imbibing in alcoholic beverages whilst he was away languishing in prison. And, upon his J28 release, he was immediately linked to her brutal beating. A few hours later, her dead body was recovered 3% kilometres from her home, but within 50 metres only, from the veranda of his grandmother’s house where the appellant spent the night. As it turned out, the appellant was the person with whom she was last seen alive the previous night. As PW3 and PW5 embarked on a continued search for her early the following morning, they met with the appellant who was carrying a sack. When the deceased body was recovered from a ditch the head and upper limb were found covered in a sack. The appellant was in such a hurry to escape from the village that he could hardly wait for daybreak. He tried to run away during the night but was persuaded to wait until dawn by his grandmother. He thereafter disappeared without even seeing his seven children. As fate would have it, the law caught up with him for another transgression and the appellant was forcibly brought back almost a year later, to answer for the murder of his wife. As earlier emphasised, it is not sufficient to merely show that a witness falls in the category of a suspect witness without evidence of any motive for the witness to give false evidence against the accused. Even J29 assuming corroboration was required in this matter, from this overwhelming evidence of odd coincidences pointing to the guilt of the appellant which is on record, we are satisfied that PW2 and PW3 were more than sufficiently corroborated in their testimony and the trial judge cannot be faulted for finding that, it was the appellant who I I I » • killed the deceased, his wife. Ground one of the appeal alleging there was no corroboration accordingly fails. Coming to ground 2, the State here argues that, the appellant is trying to sneak in irrelevant evidence that the visitor’s book at prison would confirm he was married to his alleged wife, Freda Ngosa. We are also at a loss to appreciate how such evidence will in any way assist to exonerate the appellant from the commission of the offence. Firstly, because the burden to establish any defence is that of the accused himself who raises such defence and there was nothing that stopped the appellant from calling for the prison books if they were relevant to establishing his defence. Even if we were to assume that the appellant’s argument is directed at the evidence of PW1, PW4 and J30 PW5 who all testified that they were asleep in their homes when they were alerted by other villagers that “John” (the appellant) was seen brutally assaulting his wife. And, we further assume that the wife referred to was actually Freda Ngosa, as the appellant would have liked the trial court to believe. Consequently, that since Freda Ngosa was not dead, the appellant was not the ‘John’ PW1, PW4 and PW5 were referring to in their evidence, concerning the beating of the deceased. The issue here, is not which of the women the appellant was married to at the material time, but rather who was last seen with the deceased alive. The evidence on record is that, it is the appellant who was last seen leaving with the deceased after brutalising her outside Kambili bar, prompting PW3, and PW5 and her husband to go looking for them the same night. As we have already said under ground one of the appeal, the truth of the matter is that, the evidence which the appellant did not address in his defence, shows it is him who found his wife with whom he had seven children drinking at a bar, just after he was released A x * .y A J31 from prison. This so upset the appellant as to cause him to brutally beat her up. The appellant confirmed the beating to his grandmother PW1 whom he told that he beat the deceased because he found her drinking. Accordingly, the appellant’s contention in ground two of the appeal, that guilt was not the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from all the circumstantial evidence provided in this case, is not supported by this cogent evidence which is on record. From the evidence of PW1, PW2, and PW3 as well as all the odd coincidences earlier pointed out, it is clear to us, that this evidence although circumstantial, has indeed taken the case out of the realm of conjecture to the reality that leaves the inference of guilt on the part of the appellant, as the only reasonable one to be drawn from it. We do not consider it plausible on the evidence, that the deceased could have been murdered by unknown people, when all the evidence points to the appellant, who was clearly aggrieved with his wife’s drinking habits and thus had a motive for causing her harm. Ground two of the appeal equally fails. We uphold the trial court below and accordingly, dismiss this appeal for total want of merit. Appeal dismissed. J32 M. MUSONDA SUPREME COURT JUDGE J. K. KABUKA SUPREME COURT JUDGE SUPREME COURT JUDGE