THE PROBLEM OF LENGTHY PRE-TRIAL DETENTION IN UGANDA
Court with w Jurisdiction The Ge eneral Cou urt Martial and the High Courtt have jurrisdiction o over capita al cases (maxim mum penaltty of death), while the e Magistrattes Courts hear most non-capita al cases. For this s reason, itt is preferab ble to exam mine Court with Jurisdiction in co onjunction with w the level off offence. s in the Certain compariso ons could not n be mad de because e of the sm mall numbe ers of cases ub-sets. Fo or example, there are e 16 detain nees charged with no on-capital offences o data su whose matters arre being he eard by the e High Court. Althoug gh the High h Court tec chnically t hear non-capital cases, it is very rare r for it to exercise this has jurisdiction to ction. jurisdic The me eaningful comparisons c s that coulld be made e regarding g the mean n time on remand were th he following g: •
Court Marttial versus Magistrates s Court for cases with h a maximu um penalty of 5-10 years;
•
H Court for capital cases. Court Marttial versus High
cing a maximum pena alty of 5-10 years, th he mean time on rem mand is For dettainees fac much greater g for the t M than n for the Ma agistrates Court C (331 days as co ompared Court Martial to 74). Table 5 in n the Appe endix show ws the distrributions. For capital cases, the Court er average days on re emand tha an the High h Court (67 79 for the Military Martial had highe v 394 for the High Court). See S Table 6 in the App pendix for tthe distributions. Court versus Notably y, 64% (16 66 out of 26 61) of the capital c case es before th he Court Martial had been b on remand d for over a year, com mpared to 37% (170 out of 464) for the High Court. Gender The vas st majority y (92%) of detainees were men.. Relative tto their num mbers, wom men are more likely to be accused off murder, while w men are a more liikely to be accused off crimes ularly capital crimes) other than murder (s see Figure 4). 4 Only on ne female detainee d (particu was under the jurrisdiction off the Court Martial (se ee Table 8 in the Appe endix) Figure 4
Gend der and TType off Offencce Murder Capitaal but not Murder L Imprisonm Life ment 10 - 15 Years
Males Females
5 - 10 Years 1 - 5 Years Under 1 Year Y 0
5
10
15
20
32
25
30
35
40