Judgment No. CCZ 13/2015 4
Const. Application No. CCZ 56/13
robbery. On the record of the proceedings which has gone missing, he expressed the
view, without substantiation, that the circumstances suggested collusion between the
applicant and officers at the High Court to ensure that the matter was not concluded.
[12]
The applicant, exasperated by what he considered were unfounded allegations made
by the trial judge against him, in a supplementary affidavit, denied that he had ever
been convicted and that the proceedings had been postponed so that sentence could
be pronounced. He stated that nothing further had happened after the closure of the
defence case. He denied the suggestion that he may have had anything to do with the
disappearance of the record of the proceedings, citing lack of capacity on his part,
owing to the fact that he has always been in custody.
[13]
The matter was again set down before this Court on 12 March 2014. It became clear
from the submissions made during that hearing that there was a dispute as to how far
the matter had gone and whether it was still possible for the record of the
proceedings to be reconstructed. The State however advised the Court that, at a
meeting attended by both sides in the trial judge’s chambers, the latter had indicated
that he was able to reconstruct the record of proceedings using notes provided by the
prosecution. Following this revelation, this Court again postponed the matter and
issued another order directing the Registrar of the High Court to attend to the
reconstruction of the record, within thirty (30) days, with the assistance of both the
State and Defence counsel, the assessors and other officials who had a role to play in
the criminal proceedings.
[14]
Following upon the above order of this Court, a number of affidavits were filed:
14.1 Faith Rutendo Matuku, a legal process transcriber who transcribed tape
numbers 11 to 22 (tape numbers 1-10 having been transcribed by