A digital chain of custody, not just a phone, is what the prosecution must prove

Benson Amwai Komba was charged with the murder of Monica Wanjiru Ngatia at a lodging in Nyahururu in November 2023. At the close of the prosecution’s case, the defence — through the firm of Muchangi Patrick & Associates Advocates — filed a written no-case-to-answer submission that turned entirely on the reliability of the prosecution’s digital evidence chain. The case against the Accused rested on a cellphone allegedly belonging to the deceased, tracked to a witness who claimed to have bought it from the Accused. But the officer who tracked the phone by its IMEI was never called to give evidence; no mobile network data was produced linking the phone’s SIM history to the deceased; no forensic testing connected the device to her at all; and the witness who claimed to have purchased the phone had, by his own admission, no documentary proof of the transaction. The Court held that circumstantial evidence can only sustain a conviction where it “irresistibly points to the Accused to the exclusion of all others” — applying Sawe v Republic [2003] eKLR — and that an unbroken, evidenced chain from device to deceased to Accused is exactly what a phone-based prosecution case cannot skip. The prosecution’s theory failed for want of that chain, and the Accused was acquitted at the close of the prosecution case under section 306(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code.