Makame, Ramadhani and Mfalila, JJ.A.: The appellant Dastan Antony Luambano was condemned to suffer C death and he is now appealing from the decision. The High Court sitting at Songea, (Kazimoto, J.), found it established that the appellant, with malice aforethought, killed Micaela Mwenda, the wife of Edward Danda, a person the appellant believed to be his wife's paramour. The allegation was that the appellant deliberately put D poison in some flour which the deceased used to cook a meal for herself and her family. She died as a result of eating that meal. Her husband and her son were also taken ill as a result of partaking of the meal. This was at Namabengo village in Songea District on 31st August, 1986. E
Mr. Mwanyika learned State Attorney, resisted the appeal argued before us by Miss Mcharo, learned Counsel for the appellant.
Miss Mcharo had filed two grounds of appeal - that the trial court should have considered the defence of accidental poisoning, and secondly, that the learned trial judge should have invoked the provisions of section 220 (1) of the F Criminal Procedure Act, 1985; in other words he should have ordered the appellant to be detained at a mental hospital for medical examination.
We were not at all surprised that at the hearing of the appeal Miss Mcharo abandoned the first ground, and we are G able to say at the outset that Miss Mcharo is on very thin ground with regard to the second prong of her attack.
Before section 220(1) can be brought into play it must first appear to the court that the accused person might have been insane at the material time. There must be some material which would make it appear to the court, and H reasonably so if we may add, that the accused person might have been insane when he committed the deed. In the instant case we are of the considered view that there was no material such as would have made the court feel that the accused might have been insane.
There was plenty of evidence, despite the appellant's protestations to the contrary, that the appellant believed that I the deceased's husband,
A Danda, was in the habit of enjoying the appellant's wife's intimate favours. After the deceased had got killed the appellant wrote to a brother of his confiding to him how the deceased unhappily got killed when the appellant had intended to kill the deceased's husband who had been sleeping with the appellant's wife. We see nothing that would B persuade us to agree that the trial court should have ordered the appellant to be medically examined as to his mental health. Miss Mcharo urged that the appellant's act of poisoning food stuff which he knew would be consumed also by other people, and not only by Danda, was irrational. We ask, what murder is ever rational?
C We agree with Mr. Mwanyika that the evidence against the appellant was overwhelming and we accordingly dismiss the appeal.
Appeal dismissed.
1990 TLR 4
D
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