Even though delayed, it now seems that justice in this second case will not be denied. Because, after perhaps the longest preliminary hearing in the history of English jurisprudence – having convened last September, a judge ruled this week that there is in fact sufficient evidence for Cholmondeley to be tried for murder… If convicted, he will be hanged – despite a long-standing government pledge to abolish the death penalty.
[British aristocrat faces death…for serial “white mischief,” TIJ, July 26, 2007]
This, in part, is how I reacted when a Kenyan judge finally ruled that, after getting away with the murder of one local Maasai, Thomas Cholmondeley, would be tried for the murder of a second one.
His arrest for the first killing in 2006 grabbed my attention because it signified an all too belated day of reckoning between post-colonial Kenya, where blacks rule, and its Great Rift Valley, where expatriates still abide by the colonial presumptions of white supremacy, including, evidently, the presumption that it’s okay to kill a black to save a gazelle.
Security guards at the Delamere family estate have been chasing and beating us for simply gathering dead wood for firewood in the farm… This has been going on for as long as I can remember. The situation is so skewed, we feel like we’re still living in colonial Kenya.
[Sarah Njoya, 31, widow of the man Cholmondeley has now been convicted of killing.]
Of course there’s no denying my prurient interest in witnessing the comeuppance of this fortunate son of the 5th Baron Delamere. After all, the Cholmondeleys are to Great Rift Valley of Kenya what the Kennedys are to the state of Massachusetts in America.
Not to mention that his trial conjured up all of the salacious reasons why this expatriate community acquired the nickname Happy Valley – so called for the ‘hedonistic exploits of a notorious group of those early white settlers, among whom wife-swapping, drug taking and gin for breakfast were common.’
But, as the opening quote indicates, I not only lamented the glacial pace of Kenya’s criminal due process, but also demurred on whether Cholmondeley’s conviction in the court of public opinion would be affirmed in a court of law. Alas, it was not.
For instead of cold-blooded murder, he was convicted on Thursday of the lesser charge of manslaughter. This, despite the fact that his only defense for this killing was the same one he gave for the first one, namely, that he mistook the victim for a trespasser attempting to poach prized game from his family’s sprawling estate.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the verdict, it is clear that black Kenyans consider Cholmondeley a double murderer to the same degree that white Americans consider O.J. Simpson one. Therefore, even though he’s not supposed to, it’ll be interesting to see if, in sentencing Cholmondeley, the judge not only metes out justice for the unlawful killing of these two black men, but also makes Cholmondeley pay for all of the white mischief his fellow settlers have gotten away with in Happy Valley.
Sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow, and the judge’s discretion ranges from imposing a life sentence to letting him walk (taking into account the three years Cholmondeley has already served since his arrest).
I predict the sentence will be closer to life imprisonment than a walk. That is, unless Lord Delamere has already deposited “ransom” money in an off shore account to buy unwarranted leniency for his trigger-happy heir, which would surprise nobody who knows anything about corruption in Kenya….
In the meantime, I feel obliged to take exception to Western reporters who have ridiculed the slow pace of this trial as typical of the dysfunctional pathology that plagues all of Africa:
First of all, just like Kenya, many Western countries can be criticized for the untenable backlog of cases that clog their judicial systems. Though, more telling is the wholly sympathetic fact that technology is so lacking in the Kenya that the judge had to record every word uttered during this trial himself … long hand.
By contrast, despite access to all of the technological features that should ensure swift justice, the Italians are taking longer to conduct the murder trial of Amanda Knox; and the Americans took even longer to conduct the recently concluded murder trial of Phil Spector.
Related commentaries:
British aristocrat faces death…for serial “white mischief”
Phil Spector … convicted of murder
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