Prosecution fails in bid for 'alternative verdict'

Malawi’s High Court has taken the prosecution to task for charging an accused with the wrong offence – for grievous harm in a domestic violence case, instead of a lesser offence reflecting the level of injuries actually inflicted. It also rejected a call for the judge, sitting on appeal in the case, to ‘substitute’ his own ‘alternative verdict’ that more accurately indicated the level of violence used. The judge said even though substituted alternative verdicts had been imposed by Malawi’s courts in the past they were no longer constitutionally acceptable, something the Supreme Court of Appeal had already made clear, writes Carmel Rickard in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site. He thus acquitted the accused, a senior police officer, and set aside his sentence, a decision the judge called a ‘sad outcome’.