A MAN’S defense of insanity, after he was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his wife, who caught him attempting to rape his daughter, has failed to hold in the Court of Appeal of Zambia.
Elias Mwansa, of Chililabombwe, was convicted and sentenced to death by the High Court for murdering his wife, Musole Mbilishi.
Details in the case are that on July 17, 2021, Mwansa found his daughter speaking with a man near a bush.
This did not please him and he asked the daughter to choose whether to be killed or have sex with him.
However, the daughter ran away while Mwansa gave chase in an attempt to rape her.
But while struggling with his daughter, the wife arrived and when asked what he was doing, he responded that he needed a younger woman.
The following day, the wife and her children moved out of the house to go and stay with a relative.
However, Mwansa followed them on the pretext that he needed them back home and he had engaged elders to sit them down.
When the family returned, Mwansa sharpened his axe and while his wife was in the bedroom, he followed her and hacked her in her neck.
His daughter found him struggling to remove the axe from her mother’s neck and she rushed out to call for help.
The court further heard that as Mwansa’s daughter called for help, he pursued her and threw an axe in her direction, threatening to end her life to prevent her from revealing what she had witnessed.
However, the axe missed the daughter, who managed to call for help, and Mwansa was apprehended and eventually charged with murder.
In his defence, Mwansa said he did not know what he was doing, stating that he had a mental illness and was haunted for attempting to rape his daughter.
He further said he had episodes of mental illness and at some point he was admitted to Chainama Hills Mental Hospital in Lusaka.
However, Court of Appeal judge Kelvin Muzenga rejected the appeal, stating that the level of coordination in his actions indicated command over his mental faculties.
“The appeal is hereby dismissed, and the conviction and sentence are upheld,” he stated.
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