Kenya: AG Nominee Oduor Pledges to Only Approve Water Tight Cases to Reduce Legal Expenses

Nairobi — The Attorney General nominee, Dorcas Oduor, has assured she will ensure the country doesn’t incur unnecessary expenses in legal cases by approving water tight cases once approved into office.

Oduor insisted that she will be hands on in advising Ministries, Departments and Authority on how they should deal with court matters to ensure they seek alternative dispute resolution mechanism.

“If I’m losing a case because I have a bad case, it would be my responsibility as the Attorney General to make sure that before we go to court, I relook at the cases that we have, I try to mitigate the risk of going to court,” she stated.

She argued that most legal cases are lost due to inadequate representation saying the Office of the Attorney General needs to equipped with adequate capacity to deal with different cases at the corridors of justice.

“I will look at my capacity and the expertise that I have within the Office of the Attorney General, in the office of the DPP, we initially had private Council assisting us, but with the time, we looked at the capacities that we have, we have to enhance the capacity of our state council,” Oduor noted.

Oduor emphasized the importance of risk assessment when filling cases in court on behalf of the government to reduce cost.

“I will make sure that if I have a bad case, I look for mitigating factors. If I have insufficient or inadequate representation, I will make sure that wherever the government is to be defended in court, we have the correct people defending the government,” she said.

President William Ruto’s nominee for the State Law Office has promised to reform the criminal justice system in a bid to end perennial delays in courts.

Oduor told the National Assembly Appoitments Committee on Friday that she would also reform the limitations around the rights of arrested persons in a bid to resolve the inequity between the rich and the poor.

“None of the people charged with corruption cases was in pretrial detention. It is only the poor,” she told the panel chaired by Speaker Moses Wetangula.

“They have no food, their cases take very long and most people who should be in custody are walking outside and most people who should be outside are in custody,” Oduor explained.

She singled out instances where prosecutors using the Decision to Charge Guidelines and the Diversion Guidelines have diverted matters out of the criminal justice system to give non-custodial sentences including reasonable fines and warnings, as key interventions during her term in the Public Prosecutor’s office.

Oduor noted that despite the alternative policies to address such offences outside of the criminal justice system, it remains a growing concern that “profiling, over-policing and over-incarceration” still lead to mass arrests and incarceration of poor and vulnerable Kenyans.

“The decision to charge guidelines is supposed to regulate decision to charge so that pretty cases do not go to courts,” she told the committee.

“The diversion guidelines is supposed to attend to alternative to prosecutions because we realize that not everybody who is charged with an offense should go through the system,” she said.