PRESS RELEASE: AdvocAid client granted appeal on murder conviction after over nine years in detention
January 29th 2019
AdvocAid is delighted to announce that today our appeal on behalf of our client Aminata* was granted by the Court of Appeal. Her sentence has been quashed, following an almost four-year wait for judgement.
Following her arrest in 2009, Aminata* was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 2010. Aminata was accused of murdering her abusive boyfriend during a struggle whilst he was beating her.
Her appeal was granted today on the two grounds put forward by her lawyer, Simitie Lavaly[1]: i) that the Presiding Judge did not put her in the charge of the jury and ii) that the issue of self-defence was not properly put to the jury.
AdvocAid filed an appeal on Aminata’s behalf in December 2010. Her death penalty sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by Presidential Pardon to mark Sierra Leone’s 50th Independence Anniversary. Aminata’s case was heard by the Court of Appeal in 2014, and closed for judgement in February 2015. AdvocAid and Aminata have been waiting almost four years to hear the verdict of her appeal.
Once Aminata is released, AdvocAid will continue to assist her and support her in the challenging process of reintegration and rehabilitation after nearly 10 years in prison.
AdvocAid also calls on the Government of Sierra Leone to review the death penalty as a mandatory sentence for murder. Mandatory death sentences remove the ability of the courts to consider relevant mitigating circumstances during sentencing.[2] Many women accused of murder are charged with murdering an abusive husband or partner, after periods of prolonged abuse. Police, prosecutors and judges should take a gender-sensitive approach and consider the factors that lead women to come into conflict with the law, which often include histories of poverty and gender-based violence.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
*Not her real name
Interview: Aminata’s legal representatives and AdvocAid’s Executive Director are available for interview. If interested, please contact: Rebecca Wood, +232 (0) 7733 1897 or executive.director@advocaidsl.org
To learn more about Aminata’s story, please read this opinion piece from our board member and co-founder, Sabrina Mahtani: http://advocaidsl.org/sierra-leone-justice-women-kill/
Aminata also featured in a series of short films AdvocAid produced entitled ‘Voices from Inside.’ You can watch her explain part of her story here: https://www.facebook.com/AdvocAidSierraLeone/videos/346279426165439/
Background: AdvocAid works with girls and women caught up in Sierra Leone’s often unjust legal system. We are the only organisation in West Africa providing holistic access to justice via free legal representation, education empowerment, detainee support and a moving forward programme, ensuring detainees leave as stronger women with brighter prospects.
Today, we work in several towns across Sierra Leone to ensure these women and their children receive fair legal representation, are educated on their legal rights and offered rehabilitation support upon release. As well as providing these short-term interventions, we deliver advocacy and law reform projects focused on wider issues impacting women in the justice system, ensuring we are changing women’s future prospects in the long term.
For more details on our work, please visit our website: http://advocaidsl.org/
[1] Former Executive Director of AdvocAid.
[2] Many countries in Africa have moved away from the use of the mandatory death penalty. For example, the Supreme Court of Kenya declared in 2017 that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional, as have Malawi and Uganda.