High Court judge Jessie Lessit has vowed to take stern action after discovering that National Youth Service (NYS) suspects have been defrauding the courts and walking away scot-free.
Speaking during her Murang’a law courts tour on Tuesday, the respected judge disclosed that the suspects presented fake documents and sureties for bail release.
She, however, noted that the courts were considering tighter rules to verify documents to ensure no fakes passed through the system.
“The courts have been left with fake title deeds, log books among other documents, as the suspects could not be traced,” she remarked.
The Bails and Bonds Implementation Committee chairperson further divulged that issuance of fake title deeds, which are subsequently used as sureties in courts of law, has been on the rise in Nairobi.
Nonetheless, the judge praised the bond policy introduction remarking that it had significantly de-congested prisons in Kenya by reducing the number of remandees from 48 to 40 per cent.
“Population in prisons is at 50,152, following effective sensitisation of stakeholders and adherence to the policy guidelines,” Lesiit added.
Justice Lessit is respected and feared in equal measure by lawyers who have appeared in her courts with a well-known record of her stern rulings.
On Thursday, November 1, she sentenced a Rwandese woman, who had been accused of killing her boyfriend, to life imprisonment on grounds that she did it deliberately.
In July 2018, she unapologetically handed a death sentence to a Lang’ata prisoner Ruth Kamande stating it was important that young people realised killing a boyfriend or girlfriend is “not cool.”
Currently, she is the lead judge on Migori Governor Okoth Obado’s case in which he is a suspect in the murder of slain student Sharon Otieno.
