CRIMINAL JUSTICE AT CROSSROADS

 

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