CRIMINAL JUSTICE AT
CROSSROADS
Persecution or Prosecution: Power,
Procedure and Accountability in Uganda’s Criminal Justice System
Keynote Address Delivered
at the inaugural Criminal Justice
System Conference, 2026
By Dr Daniel Ruhweza
1.0 Executive Summary
Uganda’s criminal justice
system presently stands at a defining constitutional and institutional
crossroads. The controversies surrounding bail and judicial discretion,
persistent trial delays, the constitutional limits of military jurisdiction,
the evolving domestic prosecution of international crimes, and the broader
relationship between criminal process and political power collectively reveal a
justice system under intense normative and operational strain. These are not
isolated institutional difficulties. They are interconnected manifestations of
a deeper constitutional question, namely whether the criminal process shall
remain governed by law, disciplined discretion, and institutional restraint, or
whether it shall gradually yield to expediency, political pressure, and public
impatience.
Charles Dickens once
wrote that “it was the best of times, it
was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness.” Few literary observations capture more accurately the paradox
of criminal justice in constitutional democracies. Ours is an age in which
legal institutions have never been more elaborate, constitutional guarantees
never more explicit, and public expectations of justice never more pronounced.
Yet it is also an age in which those very institutions are increasingly tested
by delay, politicisation, institutional strain, and public impatience. In that
sense, Uganda’s criminal justice system
stands, quite literally, at its own tale of two possibilities, one path leading
toward deeper constitutionalism, the other toward the gradual erosion of
legality under pressure.
This keynote proceeds
from a simple but foundational proposition. Criminal justice is not measured
merely by conviction rates, disposal statistics, or the punitive capacity of
the State. It is measured by whether the coercive powers of the State are exercised
lawfully, rationally, transparently, proportionately, and under institutions
capable of commanding public trust. That proposition is anchored in Uganda’s
Constitution, reinforced by the rule-of-law commitments of the East African
Community, and sustained by international fair-trial norms. Uganda already
possesses a substantial legal and institutional framework through which a
principled criminal justice system may be realised. Yet the existence of
constitutional safeguards and procedural rules alone does not secure justice.
The central challenge remains the translation of legal principle into
operational reality. The purpose of this address is therefore not merely to
diagnose defects, but to provoke disciplined reflection on how the justice
sector may move from formal legality toward lived constitutionalism.
1.1 Opening Remarks
It is both a privilege
and a profound honour to address this inaugural Criminal Justice System
Conference of the Makerere University, School of Law.
Permit me, at the outset,
to make a brief personal reflection. I have increasingly come to believe that
the seasons in which we live call not merely for expertise, but for courage.
Indeed, if prayer is the spiritual muscle by which conviction is strengthened,
then courage is the public discipline by which conviction is lived. Our present
moment demands men and women willing to speak truth even when their voices
tremble, to litigate though anxious, to write though uncertain, and to do what
is right even when fear remains present. Courage, after all, is not the absence
of fear. It is fidelity to duty despite fear.
That courage is
especially indispensable in the administration of criminal justice, for it is
within that sphere that public officials are most frequently required to choose
between expediency and principle, between pressure and legality, and between
the convenience of power and the discipline of constitutional duty.
We gather today at a
moment of uncommon significance for Uganda’s constitutional and legal order. Criminal
justice is where the State’s authority is felt most directly and most
forcefully. It is where liberty is restrained, where coercion is legalised,
where the individual is most vulnerable before public power, and where the
moral character of the Republic is most severely tested.
It has often been said
that the true measure of a State is not how it treats the powerful, but how it
treats the powerless when they stand accused. Nowhere is the moral quality of a
Republic more exposed than in the manner by which it arrests, detains, prosecutes,
and punishes those under its power.
Every constitutional
democracy must ultimately answer a difficult question. How shall the State wield its greatest coercive powers when liberty,
public safety, political pressure, institutional rivalry, and popular emotion
all converge? That question lies beneath every controversy over bail. It
lies beneath every complaint about prolonged remand. It lies beneath every
debate concerning military trials of civilians. It lies beneath every
accusation of selective prosecution, selective protection, politically motivated
charging, or delayed justice. It lies beneath every call for harsher punishment
in moments of national anxiety.
Criminal justice is
therefore never merely about criminal law. It is about the discipline of power.
It is about whether constitutional promises survive contact with political
reality. It is about whether institutions remain governed by law when expediency
would prefer otherwise. And it is about whether those entrusted with the
administration of criminal justice possess the institutional courage to choose
legality over convenience.
The call to serve the law
faithfully is, in many respects, a deeply personal one. My own journey has
taken turns I did not anticipate. I began in commercial legal practice, yet
found myself drawn instead toward constitutional law, and eventually to the teaching
of criminology and penology at Makerere University. That journey impressed upon
me a truth I have never forgotten, namely that professional life is not merely
about occupation, but about vocation. One must ask not only what work one does,
but what one has been called to do.
It is precisely that
sense of vocation which makes fidelity to the law more than a technical
obligation. It transforms legal service into a moral undertaking, for those who
are called to the law must constantly guard against the corruption of the very
institutions they serve. And nowhere is that vigilance more necessary than in
the administration of criminal justice, where the misuse of lawful authority
can produce injustice under the appearance of legality.
As Montesquieu famously
warned, “there is no greater tyranny
than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of
justice.” That warning remains painfully relevant, for the gravest danger
to a criminal justice system is not merely illegality in the open, but
illegality clothed in legal form, where procedure is manipulated, institutions
are pressured, and coercion is dressed in the language of lawful authority.
Uganda’s own history
demonstrates with painful clarity what occurs when criminal justice loses its
constitutional anchor. During the excesses of the Amin era, institutions of
arrest, detention and prosecution were frequently converted into instruments of
fear rather than law. The murder of businessman Samson Ddungu, who reportedly
begged a court not to release him for fear he would be killed by state security
agents only to be re-arrested and later shot while handcuffed in custody,
remains one of the starkest illustrations of a criminal process detached from
legality. That killing ultimately led to the prosecution and execution of
former Inspector General of Police Kassim Musa Obura, one of the most senior
security officials of that era to face judicial accountability. This incident
shows both the dangers of unchecked state power and the enduring necessity of
legal reckoning.
A criminal justice system
is not most severely tested when it convicts the obviously guilty. It is tested
when it restrains itself. It is tested when public pressure demands haste but
the Constitution demands patience. It is tested when fear demands severity but
legality demands restraint. It is tested when I nstitutions must choose between
what is immediately popular and what is enduringly lawful.
That is why this
conference is not merely timely. It is necessary.
1.2 Constitutionalism and Criminal Justice
The first principle from
which all serious discussion of criminal justice must proceed is that criminal
process in Uganda is constitutional before it is institutional. The criminal
justice system does not exist outside constitutional order, nor does it operate
by grace of institutional convenience. It derives its authority from the
Constitution and remains valid only so long as it acts within constitutional
bounds.
My own intellectual and
moral engagement with constitutionalism was shaped by a period when one could
scarcely speak of constitutional order in Uganda while northern Uganda bled
under the horrors of conflict. It seemed to me then, and still seems to me now,
that constitutional discourse is empty if it does not speak to suffering. One
cannot meaningfully defend constitutionalism in the abstract while remaining
silent when the nation’s wounds are concrete. It was that conviction which
drove my scholarly journey toward the study of international criminal law and
transitional justice, including further study at Kent in Canterbury, in search
of legal responses to conflict, impunity, truth, and reconciliation.
Uganda’s Constitution
provides the governing framework for criminal justice administration. Article
23 protects the right to personal liberty and regulates arrest, detention, and
remand. Article 28 guarantees every accused person the right to a fair hearing
before an independent and impartial tribunal. Article 120 vests prosecutorial
authority in the Director of Public Prosecutions and insulates that office from
external direction or control. Article 126 requires judicial power to be
exercised in conformity with law and substantive justice. These provisions are
not ceremonial declarations. They are practical and binding directives to every
actor across the criminal justice chain. They regulate the police officer who
arrests, the investigator who compiles the file, the prosecutor who sanctions
the charge, the magistrate who remands, the prison officer who detains, and the
judge who adjudicates.
This constitutional
discipline is reinforced at the regional level. The Treaty for the
Establishment of the East African Community embeds within regional integration
a normative commitment to the rule of law, accountability, transparency, and
human rights. Article 6(d) of the Treaty commits Partner States to these
foundational values. Article 7(2) requires adherence to principles of good
governance. Article 124 links peace and security to judicial and legal
cooperation. The East African Court of Justice has repeatedly affirmed that
these are not rhetorical aspirations but enforceable legal standards.
The practical force of
these regional commitments is most clearly seen in the jurisprudence of the
East African Court of Justice, which has consistently translated the Treaty’s
normative guarantees into concrete judicial standards governing the exercise of
State power within the criminal justice sphere. In James Katabazi and 21 Others v Secretary General of the EAC &
Attorney General of Uganda Reference
No. 1 of 2007, the Court held that the re-arrest of accused persons after
the grant of bail violated Treaty-based rule-of-law obligations. In Plaxeda Rugumba v Attorney General of
Rwanda Reference No. 8 of 2010, the
Court condemned secret detention as incompatible with legality and due process.
In Samuel Mukira Mohochi v Attorney
General of Uganda Reference No. 5 of
2011 the Court reaffirmed that executive action affecting liberty remains
subject to procedural fairness and legal accountability.
These regional judicial
pronouncements are not merely abstract affirmations of legal principle. They
resonate with Uganda’s own constitutional and historical experience, which
demonstrates in stark terms that where coercive institutions operate beyond legal
restraint, the consequences are not conjectural breaches of doctrine but
concrete episodes of institutional abuse and human suffering.
The constitutional
discipline required of criminal justice institutions is not theoretical.
Uganda’s legal history shows that where coercive institutions operate outside
constitutional restraint, the result is not merely procedural defect but
institutionalised abuse. The prosecution of Kassim Musa Obura for the murder of
Samson Ddungu remains historically significant precisely because it represented
a judicial repudiation of the proposition that rank, office, or security status
can place public officials above the law. In that sense, the case remains an
enduring warning that the criminal justice system must itself remain subject to
justice.
It is precisely this
historical reality that explains why constitutional democracies insist upon
rigorous restraint over those entrusted with prosecutorial and coercive
authority. For where the law vests officials with power over arrest, detention,
charging, and punishment, that power must remain subject to the highest
standards of constitutional discipline, lest the machinery of justice itself
become an instrument of oppression.
Justice Robert Jackson of
the United States Supreme Court once observed that “the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than
any other person in America.” The observation applies with equal force
beyond its jurisdiction of origin. It captures a wider truth about criminal
justice institutions generally, namely that where coercive authority is
concentrated without constitutional restraint, the potential for abuse becomes
profound.
Constitutionalism is not
an inconvenience to criminal justice. It is the source of its legitimacy.
Criminal justice stripped of constitutional discipline may retain force, but it
loses legal and moral authority.
For the police officer,
the badge is not a licence to dominate, but a public trust to protect. Once the
power to arrest is used to intimidate rather than to investigate, the officer
ceases to be a guardian of order and becomes an instrument of fear.
For the prosecutor,
discretion is among the most formidable powers known to law. The prosecutor
does not merely process files; he determines whose liberty shall be threatened
by the machinery of the State. And where that discretion is abused, prosecution
degenerates into persecution clothed in legal form.
For the judge,
impartiality is not a professional courtesy but a constitutional duty. A
fearful judge may preserve office, but never justice. A compromised judge may
pronounce judgments, but cannot command legitimacy.
No criminal justice
system can claim fairness where defence counsel are treated as irritants rather
than constitutional participants. Defence advocates do not obstruct justice by
defending the accused. They secure justice by testing the State’s case, exposing
weakness, and ensuring that punishment follows proof rather than accusation.
1.3 Bail, Liberty and Judicial Discretion
Few issues generate more
sustained controversy in criminal justice discourse than bail. This is because
bail lies at the intersection of two powerful and often competing impulses. On
one side lies the constitutional presumption of innocence and the right to
liberty. On the other lies public concern for safety, accountability, and the
integrity of the criminal process.
It is precisely because
bail requires the law to mediate between these competing imperatives that the
constitutional foundations of pre-trial liberty must remain firmly in view. In
navigating that tension, the criminal justice system must resist the temptation
to treat pre-trial detention as a default response to public anxiety and
instead remain anchored to the deeper constitutional philosophy that has long
shaped the presumption of innocence.
William Blackstone’s
enduring maxim remains instructive that “it
is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Whatever modern refinements may be made to that proposition, its constitutional
essence remains clear. Liberty before conviction is not a procedural
indulgence. It is the practical expression of the presumption of innocence.
A court that imprisons
before conviction without lawful justification abandons the presumption of
innocence in everything but name. Bail denied without reason is liberty denied
without judgment.
Yet the starting point of
constitutional principle remains unchanged. An accused person is not a convict.
Pre-trial detention is not punishment. Liberty remains the default position
unless lawful reasons justify its temporary restriction.
Uganda’s legal frameworks
recognise the presumption of innocence, the right to apply for bail, the
judicial power to impose reasonable conditions, and the obligation to determine
bail applications expeditiously. They further restate constitutional remand
limits and seek to promote consistency in bail decision-making. These normative
guarantees, however, derive their practical force not from legislative
recognition alone, but from sustained judicial interpretation and enforcement,
through which the courts have translated abstract constitutional and procedural
protections into concrete safeguards governing the exercise of bail discretion.
Ugandan jurisprudence has
fortified these principles. In Foundation
for Human Rights Initiatives v Attorney General Constitutional Petition No. 20 of 2006 the Constitutional Court,
later affirmed by the Supreme Court in Constitutional
Appeal No. 3 of 2009, held that prolonged detention beyond constitutional
remand periods offends the Constitution and that mandatory release provisions
must be respected. At the same time, judicial discretion remains genuine and
necessary. In Musoke Jackson v Uganda Crim
Misc Appl No. 5 of 2008 and Malibano
Abdul & Another v Uganda Criminal
Misc. App. No. 5 of 2008 the High Court recognised that factors such as
flight risk, witness interference, gravity of offence, and the interests of
justice may justify refusal.
The issue, therefore, is
not whether courts should grant or deny bail more frequently. The issue is
whether discretion is exercised transparently, rationally, and consistently.
Judicial discretion ceases to command public respect when similar cases produce
radically different outcomes without explanation. It loses legitimacy when
surety requirements operate as economic barriers to liberty. It becomes suspect
when remand itself transforms into punishment by delay. Most dangerously, it
becomes constitutionally distorted when legal reasoning gives way to public
outrage or political sensitivity.
The true constitutional
demand is therefore not leniency, nor severity, but principled consistency.
Bail must remain a legal determination grounded in reasons, not sentiment.
1.4 Procedural Discretion and Trial Delays
Delay within criminal
justice is often discussed as an administrative inconvenience. That
characterisation profoundly understates its significance. Delay is not merely
inefficiency. Delay is injustice institutionalised through time. This is
because delay in criminal adjudication does not operate as a neutral
administrative lapse. It carries substantive constitutional consequences,
distorting the fairness, legitimacy, and humanity of the criminal process
itself.
Martin Luther King Jr.
reminded the world that “justice too
long delayed is justice denied.” That observation is no rhetorical
flourish. It captures a constitutional reality. Delay in criminal justice
corrodes fairness, weakens evidence, punishes before conviction, and gradually
transforms legal process into institutional oppression.
Delayed justice is not
neutral delay. It is punishment administered through time rather than sentence.
A file left dormant on a shelf may be as oppressive as a prison door left shut
without cause.
A criminal process that
keeps accused persons on remand for years before trial, that leaves victims
waiting indefinitely for closure, that permits files to stagnate through
adjournment after adjournment, and that allows evidentiary quality to
deteriorate through institutional inertia cannot plausibly claim to deliver
substantive justice.
The case of Shabahura Matia v Uganda, Criminal Revision
Cause No. In MSK-00-005 of 1999 (per Hon. Justice Egonda Ntende) addressed
a situation where an accused person had remained in pre-committal limbo for an
extraordinary period. The Applicant had been charged with murder, a capital
offence triable only by the High Court. Yet, for three years and nine months,
the State failed to commit him for trial. Although he had been granted bail, he
was unable to meet the terms and thus remained in custody; effectively
imprisoned without trial.
In Nicholas Opiyo v Uganda Misc. Appl. No. 16 of 2021 (Anti-Corruption
Division) presided over by Hon. Justice Lawrence Gidudu was confronted with a
troubling pattern of prosecutorial delay. The Applicant, a human-rights lawyer,
had been arrested and charged in December 2020 with an offence involving alleged
money-laundering through digital transactions. By September 2021; nine months
later; the State had not produced an indictment, had not committed him to the
High Court, and repeatedly gave only one explanation: “investigations are still
ongoing.”
Justice Gidudu held that
such a refrain could not become a permanent shield against judicial scrutiny.
He famously declared that the repeated reliance on incomplete investigations
was “a song that is insufficient in itself to warrant continued adjournments.”
The Court emphasised that delay must be justified by concrete investigative
challenges; not merely asserted as a ritual incantation. Given that digital
transaction cases are ordinarily traceable through financial trails and
electronic footprints, the Court found the nine-month delay “approaching
inordinate.”
The decision in Byamukama Alfred v Uganda, Consolidated
Criminal Miscellaneous Applications Nos. 84 and 85 of 2025, further
supports termination of proceedings. In that case, the Court dismissed a murder
prosecution that had been pending for nearly three decades after it became
impossible to proceed due to a missing Police file and an inability to
reconstruct the record. The Court held that continued detention or prosecution
in such circumstances violates the right to a fair hearing, and that judicial
power under sections 17(2) and 33 of the Judicature Act must be used to prevent
oppression and abuse of court process. Byamukama demonstrates that once the
prosecution is unable to proceed; whether due to lost records, missing files,
or administrative collapse; the High Court must terminate the case.
In the case of Bonafacio Mulugga & others v Attorney
General, Constnal Petition No. 17 of 2015, several prisoners had been
committed to the High Court for three to six years without trial. The
Constitutinal Court held that: A speedy trial is essential to uphold the
presumption of innocence, Bail does not cure violations of the right to a
timely hearing, Even where an accused is already in lawful custody, prolonged
delay after committal becomes unconstitutional and oppressive, The Constitution
demands that trials occur without unreasonable delay, and this is an absolute,
non-derogable requirement under Article 44(c), The State cannot rely on excuses
such as limited resources, administrative failures, or systemic inefficiencies.
The Constitutional Court also emphasised that delay imposes severe hardships on
accused persons, including: Loss of dignity, Psychological and emotional
distress, Social and economic disruption, Erosion of liberty and security of
the person, Breakdown of the presumption of innocence.
The ODPP Decision to
Charge Guidelines, 2023 rightly impose discipline at the charging stage through
the evidential test and public interest test. Their insistence that no case
proceed absent sufficient evidence is not merely administrative prudence. It is
a constitutional safeguard against abusive prosecution. It recognises that
prosecution itself is a coercive act and that no person should be subjected to
the burdens of criminal process absent lawful evidential justification.
Efficiency tools such as
plea bargaining, diversion, and specialised criminal sessions have proven
useful in reducing backlog. Yet such reforms must remain tethered to legality.
In Ahimbisibwe Kateregga v Uganda, Criminal Appeal No. 0439 of 2017 the
Court of Appeal made clear that procedural efficiency cannot override lawful
sentencing safeguards by holding that a court may not impose a harsher sentence
than agreed in a valid plea bargain unless the plea agreement is rejected.
The deeper truth is that
delay is not caused by one institution alone. It is a system-wide pathology.
Weak investigations delay charge approval. Poor file management delays
prosecution. Repeated adjournments delay adjudication. Prison congestion
complicates production of accused persons. Understaffing weakens every stage.
Delay therefore cannot be solved through isolated institutional reform. It
requires whole-system coordination.
A justice system is not
vindicated merely because it convicts lawfully. It must also punish humanely.
Conditions of detention, opportunities for rehabilitation, and prospects for
reintegration remain part of justice, not separate from it.
1.5 Military Jurisdiction and the Trial of Civilians
The constitutional debate
concerning military jurisdiction over civilians has become one of the most
contested legal questions in Uganda’s recent history because it implicates the
very nature of lawful adjudication. It concerns not merely where civilians are
tried, but whether the tribunal before which they appear satisfies the
constitutional requirements of independence, impartiality, competence, and
institutional propriety.
This question of
constitutional propriety cannot be answered merely by pointing to the formal
existence of a military tribunal. It requires a deeper interrogation of whether
such a forum, by its structure, mandate, composition, and institutional
character, satisfies the substantive legal threshold of competence demanded by
both constitutional and international fair trial standards.
Competence under Article
14 of the ICCPR means far more than the mere existence of a court. A tribunal
is competent only where it possesses lawful jurisdiction, professionally
qualified adjudicators, adequate procedural and institutional capacity, the ability
to assess complex evidence, and structural suitability to hear the matter
before it. A court may be established by law yet remain incompetent if it lacks
the legal authority, expertise, institutional resources, or constitutional
orientation necessary to deliver fair and reasoned justice.
In Attorney General v Kabaziguruka Constitutional Appeal No. 2 of 2021 [2025] UGSC 1 the Supreme Court
held that the trial of civilians before military courts was unconstitutional.
That judgment reaffirmed a constitutional principle deeply embedded in
democratic legal systems, namely that ordinary criminal justice should
ordinarily be administered by ordinary courts.
Continental and
international standards reinforce this position. The African Commission’s
Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial reject the substitution
of military tribunals for civilian courts in the trial of civilians. Article 14
of the ICCPR similarly requires trial before a competent, independent and
impartial tribunal established by law.
The issue should not be
reduced to a false contest between national security and civil liberty.
Properly understood, it concerns institutional competence and constitutional
structure. Military courts exist to preserve military discipline and order
within the armed forces. Civilian criminal courts exist to adjudicate public
wrongs under constitutional guarantees. Where those roles are collapsed into
one another, both systems get distorted. Military justice risks politicisation.
Civilian justice risks constitutional degradation.
Exceptional jurisdiction,
if permitted at all, must remain genuinely exceptional, narrowly defined, and
strictly supervised. Otherwise, constitutional exception soon becomes ordinary
practice.
As Lord Atkin famously
insisted in Liversidge v Anderson [1942]
AC 206 (HL), “amid the clash of
arms, the laws are not silent.” The force of that principle is in its
insistence that even where security concerns are genuine, constitutional
safeguards do not evaporate. They become more important, not less.
Uganda’s constitutional
memory should make the country particularly cautious of exceptional criminal
forums. History repeatedly teaches that once ordinary safeguards are displaced
in the name of necessity, emergency, or se curity; the exceptional soon begins
to threaten the ordinary. Constitutional democracies decay not only through
dramatic rupture, but through the gradual normalisation of exceptional power.
The soldier is trained to
defeat enemies of the State. The judge is trained to determine rights under
law. Where the sword assumes the role of the scales, justice itself stands
imperilled.
An army is strongest when
it protects constitutional order, not when it displaces it. The nobility of
military service lies not in governing civilians, but in defending the
constitutional framework within which civilians are governed.
1.6 International Criminal Accountability and Regional
Cooperation
Uganda’s emergence as a
significant domestic actor in international criminal accountability marks one
of the most important developments in its recent legal history. The
establishment of the International Crimes Division of the High Court in 2008
signalled a deliberate institutional move toward domestic accountability for
atrocity crimes.
That capacity was most
dramatically demonstrated in Uganda v
Thomas Kwoyelo HCT-00-ICD-CR-SC 2 of
2010 [2024] UGHCICD 10, where the International Crimes Division convicted
Kwoyelo on forty-four counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The
significance of that judgment cannot be overstated. It demonstrated that Uganda
possesses both the legal framework and institutional capacity to prosecute
grave international crimes domestically.
The Nuremberg legacy
taught the world that “crimes against
international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities.”
Accountability for grave crimes therefore requires not only institutional
structures, but the willingness of legal systems to hold individuals personally
answerable, however powerful or historically situated they may be.
Equally significant was Laker & 102 Others v Uganda &
Kwoyelo Misc. Application 35 of 2024 in which the Court recognised victims’
material and psychological harm and ordered reparations. This confirmed that
accountability for international crimes requires not merely punishment of
perpetrators, but recognition of victims.
Justice must protect not
only the rights of the accused, but the dignity of victims. A criminal process
that forgets victims may remain lawful, yet still fail to be humane.
Uganda’s experience with
accountability also stretches beyond international crimes in the strict
doctrinal sense. The country’s post-conflict and post-authoritarian legal
history contains important domestic examples of retrospective criminal
accountability for grave abuses committed during periods of political violence
and repression. Both the prosecution of former Amin-era security officials and
the prosecution of politically sensitive crimes linked to the Bush War period
demonstrate that criminal adjudication has long played a role in Uganda’s
broader historical reckoning with violence and abuse of state power.
International criminal
accountability, however, cannot operate effectively in isolation. It depends
upon regional and international cooperation. The continuing proceedings in Prosecutor v Joseph Kony ICC-02/04-01/05 (2025), before the
International Criminal Court demonstrate that atrocity accountability
increasingly transcends borders. Effective accountability therefore requires
strong mutual legal assistance frameworks, extradition cooperation, witness
transfer arrangements, forensic evidence management, and specialist expertise
in transnational investigations.
Regional jurisprudence
reinforces that such cooperation must remain bounded by legality. In Torroha Mohamed Torroha v Republic [1989]
KECA 46 and Republic v Wilfred
Onyango Nganyi & Another [2008]
KEHC 1677, courts reaffirmed that extradition may not proceed where fair
trial guarantees are absent. Thus even in transnational justice, expediency
must remain subordinate to legality.
1.7 Criminal Justice, Power and Political Actors
No analysis of criminal
justice can be complete without confronting the role of power. Criminal justice
does not operate in an apolitical vacuum. It exists in a space where legal
judgment, institutional interests, public emotion, and political incentives
constantly intersect.
Lord Acton’s warning
remains as relevant to criminal justice institutions as to all public power,
that; “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Where criminal process is left
vulnerable to unchecked political influence, selective enforcement, or
institutional capture, that corruption need not be dramatic to be dangerous. It
may emerge gradually, through small distortions repeated until arbitrariness
becomes routine.
The greatest danger in
criminal justice is not merely wicked men with power, but ordinary officials
who misuse lawful authority while persuading themselves that they act in the
public interest.
History teaches that
institutions rarely collapse in a single dramatic moment. They decline when
small abuses are excused, selective injustices tolerated, and unlawful conduct
rationalised until the abnormal becomes routine.
Power may distort
criminal justice through selective investigation, strategic charging, tactical
delay, witness intimidation, media sensationalism, resistance to bail, or
legislative attempts to recalibrate procedural rules in response to politically
inconvenient judgments. The threat is not merely overt interference. It is the
subtle but persistent pressure exerted when institutions know what outcomes are
politically preferred.
There are moments in the
life of every lawyer, scholar, judge, prosecutor, or public servant when
silence appears safer than candour. I know this tension personally. There have
been times in my own journey when I have wrestled inwardly with whether to speak
or remain silent, whether to disturb comfortable consensus or preserve personal
safety. Yet the demands of duty do not always permit silence. They require us,
at times, to disagree without becoming disagreeable, to speak truth in love,
and to oppose in justice without surrendering civility.
Uganda’s legal history
also offers sobering examples of how criminal justice can become entangled with
politics during periods of national trauma and transition. The prosecution and
eventual execution of Hajji Musa Sebirumbi, a former Uganda People’s Congress
district chairman convicted of murders linked to the Bush War period, carried
significance far beyond the individual conviction. His execution in 1999,
alongside twenty-seven other condemned prisoners in the largest single
implementation of capital punishment in modern Ugandan history, symbolised the
State’s determination to enforce final criminal judgments arising from
politically and historically sensitive periods of conflict. Whether viewed as
accountability, retribution, or post-conflict reckoning, the episode
demonstrates how criminal justice often bears the weight of unresolved
historical memory and political contestation.
The constitutional
response to such pressure is institutional independence coupled with
accountability. Prosecutors, investigators, judges, and prison authorities must
possess sufficient independence to resist improper pressure, yet remain
sufficiently accountable to justify their decisions through law and reason.
Independence without accountability invites arbitrariness. Accountability
without independence invites institutional capture.
A prosecutor without
independence becomes a servant of politics. A judge without independence
becomes a clerk of power. A police force without restraint becomes a danger to
the very society it was created to secure.
The criminal justice
system remains legitimate only when its actors are prepared to decide cases
according to evidence and law rather than convenience and pressure.
No criminal justice
system however can command public trust where liberty, delay, or prosecutorial
discretion appear purchasable. Corruption within the justice chain is not
merely administrative misconduct. It is constitutional sabotage.
This famous quote (and
picture from the internet) comes from the final chapter of Charles Dickens'
1859 historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It is spoken by the
protagonist, Sydney Carton, as he walks to the guillotine to sacrifice his life
for the husband of the woman he loves, marking his ultimate redemption,
selfless love, and peace.
1.8 A Call to Action
The season now before us
requires more than technical reform. It requires moral seriousness. It requires
what I might call a prophetic professionalism, a willingness by those within
the legal order to use their offices not merely competently, but courageously.
Every generation is summoned to confront the defining injustice of its own
time. William Wilberforce confronted the slave trade. Others confronted
apartheid, dictatorship, and impunity. Our own generation must ask itself with
equal honesty what injustice it has tolerated too long, and what silence it has
mistaken for prudence.
Every office in the
criminal justice chain carries within it the possibility of public good or
public harm. The same power that may vindicate the innocent may destroy them.
The same authority that may preserve order may perpetrate oppression. The
difference lies not in the office itself, but in the character of the one who
occupies it.
If this conference is to
achieve more than diagnosis, it must generate disciplined commitments to
practical reform. The first imperative is the creation of a live national
criminal justice dashboard capable of tracking bail disposal times, remand
thresholds, adjournments, plea bargains, conviction and acquittal rates, and
file transfer compliance. No serious reform can occur without serious data.
Second, institutionalised
inter-agency case review mechanisms should be developed to improve early case
triage, strengthen investigations, and enhance prosecutorial disclosure. Third,
clear national transfer protocols must govern all cases moving from military to
civilian jurisdiction. Fourth, witness protection legislation and victim
support frameworks should be prioritised to strengthen both ordinary and
international criminal prosecutions. Fifth, regional cooperation mechanisms for
digital evidence, mutual legal assistance, and extradition should be
strengthened through coordinated training and standardised procedures. Finally,
justice-sector performance reviews must become annual, rigorous,
evidence-based, and publicly reported.
1.9 Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen,
criminal justice is not measured by how many arrests are made, how many charges
are filed, or how many convictions are secured. It is measured by whether
public power is exercised lawfully, rationally, transparently, and with restraint.
It is measured by whether institutions remain faithful to law when political
pressure urges expediency. It is measured by whether liberty survives public
fear. It is measured by whether fairness survives institutional fatigue.
Let this inaugural
conference therefore affirm, with clarity and conviction, that in Uganda and
across East Africa criminal justice shall not become persecution disguised as
prosecution. Let it not become coercion without accountability, efficiency
without fairness, or authority without restraint. Let it instead remain
constitutional, humane, evidence-based, and worthy of public trust.
The unmistakable
historical lessons we have include of a former Inspector General of Police who
once stood condemned for murder after presiding over coercive state power
without legal restraint. Political actors once faced the full severity of
criminal sanction for crimes tied to periods of national conflict and upheaval.
Entire eras of Ugandan history now stand as reminders that when criminal
justice is captured by power, it becomes an instrument of fear; but when it is
reclaimed by law, it becomes an instrument of constitutional order.
No criminal justice
system rises above the moral discipline of the men and women who operate it.
However elegant the Constitution, however detailed the statutes, however
elaborate the institutions, justice will always fail where those entrusted with
power lack restraint, integrity, or courage.
Ultimately, the
preservation of criminal justice will depend not only upon constitutions,
statutes, rules, or institutional design. It will depend upon whether those
entrusted with public power possess the courage to honour God, their
conscience, their families, and their nation by doing what is right when it is
difficult. Every one of us must therefore ask, not what another institution
should do, nor what another profession must fix, but what our own calling
requires of us. The central question is not merely what is broken in the
system. It is this: what is your call
within it?
For the Republic is never
strongest when the State punishes most harshly. It is strongest when the State
restrains its greatest powers most faithfully.
As Learned Hand once
cautioned, “liberty lies in the hearts
of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can
save it.” Ultimately, the preservation of criminal justice depends not on
legal texts alone, but on the constitutional character, professional courage,
and moral discipline of those entrusted to operate it.
Even our Lord, in the
Garden of Gethsemane, confronted the burden of costly obedience and prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” – Mathew 26:39.
That passage remains a profound reminder that courage is not born of comfort,
but of obedience to duty despite cost. If our own calling requires difficult
truth, institutional courage, and principled dissent, then so be it. The burden
of duty has never been light, but it remains duty nonetheless.
Courts and prosecutors
ultimately command obedience not because they possess force, but because the
public believes they act fairly.
If we remain committed to
that principle, then justice, even at a crossroads, shall still find its way.
If this moment demands
anything of us, it is courage with conscience, conviction with humility, and
truth spoken with discipline. May we each prove equal to that call.
May this generation be
remembered as one that did not shrink from its constitutional calling, but met
it with courage, conscience, and conviction.
I thank you all for your attention
