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Thursday, February 17, 2005 - Web posted at 7:47:53 GMT Baby thief's jail term reduced WERNER MENGESA THREE-YEAR prison term that was imposed on a young woman who had stolen a newborn baby from its mother last year has been judged by the High Court to be an excessive punishment for that crime. |
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At the age of 22, unemployed and trying to rewrite the Grade 12 examinations that she had previously failed, Annastancia Nalucha Lubinda received a jail term of three years in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court in October last year. That was after she had admitted her guilt on a charge of kidnapping a baby from the Katutura Hospital. On Wednesday last week, the High Court intervened, setting aside that sentence as 'inappropriate" and replacing it with a sentence of two years' imprisonment, of which one year was suspended for a period of two years. Lubinda had told the Magistrate's Court that she wanted a baby because most of her friends had babies. Without thinking of the consequences of her actions, she decided to steal the baby of a pregnant neighbour who was due to give birth at that time. She carried out her plan on October 6 last year, while she was visiting the neighbour in the Katutura Hospital. The baby's mother had asked Lubinda to look after the baby while she went to the toilet; Lubinda took the baby and took it to her home in Katutura while the mother was away. The baby was found and returned to the mother the next day. In the High Court's review judgement on the case, Acting Judge Hosea Angula noted that the High Court had dealt with a similar case in 2003, when the court reduced an effective jail term of four years that had been imposed on a woman who had stolen a baby from its mother at Oshakati. That baby was found again at Otavi ten days later. The High Court altered that woman's sentence on review to an effective term of one year's imprisonment. Lubinda's case received similar treatment, after Acting Judge Angula stated that in both cases the young baby thief involved "did not take the baby for a wicked motive but out of genuine desire to have a baby". "In my view, the youthfulness of the accused, clearly demonstrated by her naivety in believing that people would think that it was her baby without her having been pregnant, and further that she would be able to keep the baby forever, significantly reduced her blameworthiness," Acting Judge Angula stated. Judge President Petrus Damaseb agreed with Acting Judge Angula's judgement. |
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