BY SAM ALFAN.
Former NYS Director General ,members of Ngirita family and six others want Anti Corruption Chief Magistrate Douglas Ogoti to recuse himself from hearing and determining 468 million NYS scam.
The accused through their lawyer Julius Migos Ogamba claim that the magistrate will not allow fairness and impartiality to prevail during the hearing and therefore they will not get justice.
The accused are Richard Ndubai, Lucy Ngirita, Ann Ngirita, Phyllis Ngirita,Jeremiah Ngirita, Sammy Mwangi,Evans Kundu , Welenalo Mulupi, Sophy Kanyua, Ferdinand Ondonyo and Don Kariungi accuses the magistrate of being bias against them.
Ndubai say’s that, the court had already prejudiced the accused persons to be guilty of the offences they were charged with and that such offences lead to death, anarchy and threat to National security despite the prosecution not leading any evidence in support of that determination.
“The above finding has no basis and fact but only goes to show the court is biased and justice will not be met if this court will proceed with the hearing of this matter” Say’s Ndubai.
According to him social media has already tried and found them guilty of charge’s and such a reasonable perception arises that justice will not met due to predetermined of the court.
The accused Ogoti of compelling them to proceed with the pre-trial process regardless of the fact’s he was made aware that the documents to be relied on by the prosecution were not supplied to the defence contrary to the law.
“The court seems to want to trample on the rights of the accused persons since it already has a predetermined outcome that seeks to achieve and defeat the ends of justice”. say’s Ndubai.
He say after the issue’s raised raised by defense lawyers the magistrate said he will deliver the ruling which was delivered on 12 of June where he addressed the concerns raised.
In his ruling on the same, the magistrate ruled ” Pre-trials are not cast on stone, had the defense allowed first pre-trial to proceed , they would have realized that though there concerns were genuine, which I agree they “fears” we unfounded “.
Ndubai accuse the magistrate of allowing the pre-trial to be conducted by prosecution only since defense was no supplied with documents.
According to him, despite the fact’s that the magistrate is under constitutional duty to safe the rights of accused persons throughout the hearing and is therefore biased since after denying the bail, he allowed various bail application in other matters that followed.
They claim Ogoti relied on social media as one of the grounds to deny them bail thereby introduced extraneous unverified fact’s.
“The court in furtherance of it bias against the accused person relied on social and print without interrogate the veracity of the information” said the accused.
They claim the court stated the charges facing the accused persons are worse than murder despite such a comparison having no basis in law or fact.
Chief Magistrate Douglas Ogoti to deliver ruling on Friday on whether to recuse himself or not.
