High Court acquits Limbe businessman

The High Court in Blantyre has today, Wednesday, acquitted 38-year-old Lucius Moses who was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour after being convicted of burglary and theft on 22 April 2022 by the Senior Resident Court sitting at Limbe Darton.

At the time he was arrested, Lucius Moses was operating as a phone repair man in Limbe Market when an unknown person approached him to get a mobile phone fixed. After doing his job, the unknown person did not have money to pay for the service, but he had another phone. That resulted in a dispute and the matter was taken to the market chairman to have the dispute resolved.

The market chairman then bought the phone at K3,500. According to court records, Moses got K2,500 from the amount as his initial charge for repairing the other phone. The person who brought a phone for repair went away with the remaining K1,000.

Later on, the phone bought by the market chairman was discovered to have come from a burglary, and Moses was implicated. In the lower court, Moses was not represented by a lawyer and on 25 April 2022, he was sentenced to 15 years for burglary and two years for theft to run concurrently.

The Legal Aid Bureau represented Mr. Moses on appeal in the High Court and he was acquitted using the doctrine of recent possession because the state had not established recent possession of the stolen phone.

Lucius Moses is a father of two and he hails from Dayilesi Village, T/A Kalemba in Balaka district.