Counsel Mulwafu (left) with the client
On 15th July 2016, a three-year-old child went missing after accompanying her parents and siblings to their garden. Nearby, Katayeni Letiasi was tending to his own garden, approximately three gardens away. The child was later discovered dead in a river close to Letiasi’s garden, with a broken neck.
Following the incident, the father of the deceased reported to police that Letiasi was the suspect. Letiasi was arrested on 22nd July 2016. It was argued that he was responsible for the crime, citing a prior quarrel between him and the child’s father as a potential motive.
Based on these suspicions, Mr. Letiasi remained in custody for nearly two years before being released on bail on 27th March 2018.
When he was in prison in 2018, he learned about the Malawi Legal Aid Bureau during a Camp Court. He later sought legal aid for his case and when granted, he was represented in Court by Senior Legal Aid Advocate Tupalishe Mulwafu.
During the trial, the State presented four witnesses to prove that Letiasi was responsible for the offense. Prosecutors sought to establish that he was the only other person present in the gardens at the time of the child's disappearance. However, the Bureau through Counsel Mulwafu successfully challenged this claim by demonstrating that another State witness, along with several other individuals, had been present in the area that morning.
The High Court sitting in Chikwawa ultimately acquitted Letiasi, ruling that the case against him was based solely on suspicion rather than concrete evidence. Key factors leading to the acquittal were that there were no witnesses who had seen Letiasi with the child or committing the crime, multiple individuals were present in the garden that day, meaning any one of them could have been responsible, and there was no direct evidence linking Letiasi to the murder.
The Bureau Received fundinf from the European Union’s Justice and Accountability – Chilungamo Programme 3 for the acquittal