Jane Muthoni, a former principal at Icaciri Girls Secondary School, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Muthoni and her accomplice, Isaac Ng’ang’a, alias Gikuyu, were convicted of killing Solomon Mwangi, the principal of Kiiru Boys High School.
The court noted that she had vengefully planned and financed the murder of her husband.
The prosecution had stated that Muthoni killed Mwangi because she suspected he was unfaithful, accusations which she vehemently denied.
The duo’s sentencing has been backdated to 2016 when they were arrested and will thus serve for the next 25 years.
Following a landmark ruling by High Court Justice George Odunga in 2021, courts should consider the period a suspect has been in remand as part of their prison sentence.
“It is therefore clear that it is mandatory that the period in which an accused has been held in custody prior to being sentenced must be taken into account in computing the period of the sentence,” ruled Justice Odunga.
Odunga directed that prisoners who had been sentenced without consideration of the time they had been in custody, and those who had been re-sentenced without factoring in the time they had served have a right to have their sentences reviewed.
The case which was filed by 88 prisoners argued that some inmates were serving excess sentences after the judges who sentenced them failed to factor in their time in remand.
“The least prescribed sentence is one that takes into account the time spent in remand since it should be borne in mind that even though an accused person has been sentenced to a certain number of years, the accused person’s liberty was lost once arrested. It should therefore follow that the sentence is deemed to start when liberty was lost,” the judge heard.