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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uganda
Index
When Britain assumed control of Uganda, the judicial
system
consisted of a number of local authorities, tribal chiefs,
and
kin group elders, who worked primarily to enforce local
customary
law. Islamic law was also practiced in areas of northern
Uganda.
During the twentieth century, British jurisprudence was
gradually
imposed, spreading more quickly across the south than the
north.
At independence the resulting legal system consisted of
the High
Court, which heard cases involving murder, rape, treason,
and
other crimes punishable by death or life imprisonment; and
subordinate magistrates' courts, which tried cases for
crimes
punishable by shorter terms of imprisonment, fines, or
whipping.
Magistrates' court decisions could be appealed to the High
Court.
All courts had the privilege of rendering "competent
verdicts,"
whereby a person accused of one offense could also be
convicted
of a minor, related offense.
After independence the director of public prosecutions
(DPP),
appointed by the president, prosecuted criminal cases.
Under the
attorney general's direction, the DPP initiated and
conducted
criminal proceedings other than courts-martial. The DPP
also
could appoint a public prosecutor for a specific case. In
some
cases, a police official was the prosecutor, and the DPP
reviewed
and commented on the trial proceedings.
The legal system virtually broke down during the 1970s,
in
part because Amin undermined the judicial system when it
attempted to oppose him. In March 1971, for example, when
Amin
granted the security forces the right to "search and
arrest,"
they implemented the decree to harass political opponents.
The
courts were then blocked from rendering verdicts against
security
agents through a second decree granting government
officials
immunity from prosecution. By absolving soldiers and
police of
any legal accountability, Amin unleashed a reign of terror
on the
civilian population that lasted eight years.
The end of Amin's regime brought no significant
improvement
in the criminal justice system. In an effort to reassert
the rule
of law, in June 1984 the government prohibited the army
from
arresting civilians suspected of opposition to the
government,
and it allowed prisoners, for the first time in over a
decade, to
appeal to the government for their release from prison.
The army
ignored the 1984 law, however, and continued to perpetrate
crimes
against the civilian population.
When Museveni became president in 1986, he pledged to
end the
army's tyranny and reform the country's criminal justice
system
(see
Judicial System, ch. 4). He succeeded in granting
greater
autonomy to the courts, but the NRA also arrested several
thousand suspected opponents during counterinsurgency
operations
in northern and eastern Uganda. In late 1988, the NRC
passed a
constitutional amendment giving the president the power to
declare any region of the country to be in a "state of
insurgency." Subsequent legislation allowed the government
to
establish separate courts in these areas, authorized the
military
to arrest insurgents, permitted magistrates to suspend the
rules
of evidence to allow hearsay and uncorroborated evidence
in the
courtroom, and shifted the burden of proof from the
accuser to
the accused.
Data as of December 1990
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