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Veteran lawyer Cecil Miller opens gap in prosecution case, forcing an adjournment
A TRIAL court has concurred Nairobi governor MIke Sonko and his defence team were ambushed when the prosecution attempted to push him to plead to an amended charge sheet before disclosure, thanks to veteran lawyer Cecil Miller.
Miller who is representing Sonko alongside George Kithi said the defence team was “totally surprised by the turn of events” as they had gone to court to plead to charges that were served in January 27 2020 unaware that an amendment had been introduced.
He said he had not had a chance to explain the new charge to his client and invoked Article 50(2)(b) of the constitution which states that an accused person must be supplied with a charge sheet prior to trial.
“This is an ambush…we came here ready to take plea only to be served this morning, it is only fair that the first accused(Sonko) be given time to look at this (new charge) with his counsel before taking plea,” Miller submitted.
INCOMPLETE DOCUMENTS
He said the case would not proceed until “we have sufficient time” to discuss the particulars of the charge in light of the new development.
Miller also demanded that the prosecution admits that there would be no further disclosure than the one it had done on August 14 and 15 2020 through e-mail.
He told the court that the disclosed documents are not inclusive of the current charge introduced in the amendment.
“Issues that arose are issues that still call for disclosure because we have incomplete documents,” the lawyer said.
He said that the prosecution prior to amending the charge should have confirmed whether they are supplying respective documents, but the prosecution said it would be relying only on the documentation so far shared with the defence.
PLEA DEFERRED
Miller was adamant that relating to the amended charge, his team had not been supplied with prosecution documents.
He said that was a departure from earlier disclosure which was made count by count, hinting that this may be prejudicial as “it does not comply with an order made by the court” concerning the controversial disclosure.
“In light of the new charge sheet, if the narrative (sic) is that all counts are covered, how then does the new charge fit, where does this leave the new count number 2?” he posed, adding that disclosure was on all counts.
He also told the court that the defence team will need directions on reductive statements which the court ruled be provided 36 hours prior to the hearing date(s).
The prosecution said there would be no disclosure on this new charge introduced through the amendment and that no new documents would be supplied.
“The substratum of the charges remain the same, we are not introducing new issues from what had been identified,” a prosecutor said.
The plea has been deferred to September 14 2020.
In the case Sonko faces multiple charges alongside ROG Security Limited and Antony Ombok Otieno alias Jamal arising from a contract for the supply, implementation and maintenance of an electronic revenue collection and payments solution.
This article was published on Justice News on 9/7/2020.
