Tanzania overturns a thirty-year cannabis sentence over gaps in the evidence

Agnetha Sebastian won her appeal against a thirty-year cannabis-possession sentence in July 2022 after Tanzania’s Court of Appeal found a gap in the prosecution’s evidence.^[1] The judges reversed the conviction and ordered her release unless she was held for another lawful reason.^[1]

A household search led to a long sentence

Police searched Agnetha’s home in Kagera Region in February 2017 after receiving information that she was selling cannabis.^[1] The prosecution said officers found a parcel of leaves that later weighed 414 grams.^[1]

She denied that the cannabis had been found in her home and challenged the police account.^[1] After a trial she was convicted of unlawful possession of a prohibited plant and sentenced to thirty years.^[1]

The 2015 drug law included a thirty-year minimum for prohibited-plant offences.^[2] Her appeal required the prosecution’s evidence to be examined against that serious consequence.^[1][2]

Testing could identify a drug without proving its origin

Samples had been sent to an agricultural officer and the government chemist, whose reports identified cannabis and its intoxicating chemical content.^[1] The dispute concerned whether those tested samples were reliably connected to the parcel allegedly seized from Agnetha.^[1]

That connection is the chain of custody: evidence explaining who handled an item and how it was kept from seizure through testing and presentation in court.^[1] It helps show that the material tested is the material involved in the alleged offence.^[1]

The appeal court found a missing account of how samples had been collected from the seized parcel.^[1]

The missing link left reasonable doubt

The prosecution argued that the handling of the material had been sufficiently explained.^[1] The judges accepted that a chain of custody could be established through witness testimony as well as documents.^[1]

But the evidence still needed to connect the examined samples with what police said they had seized.^[1] In this case, the court found that connection had not been established and that the earlier appeal decision had misapprehended the evidence.^[1]

The conviction and sentence were reversed

The judges allowed the appeal on the evidence-handling grounds and did not need to determine the remaining arguments.^[1] Their release order ended the thirty-year sentence imposed in this case.^[1]

For people prosecuted in Tanzania, the ruling showed why the handling of cannabis evidence mattered: identifying a controlled drug was only part of proving the allegation against the accused person.^[1]