Misryoum reports the Court of Appeal begins a three-day session in Kampala to hear 66 long-pending criminal appeals.
A three-day appeal hearing is set to take the pressure off Kampala’s crowded criminal docket.
The Court of Appeal has started a weed-out session aimed at clearing long-pending criminal appeals, sitting in Kampala city from May 5, 2026, to May 7. In total, 66 matters have been lined up for hearing under the session’s cause list signed by the court’s registrar.
Justices Irene Mulyagonja, Moses Kazibwe Kawumi and Musa Ssekaana are presiding over the proceedings, which are expected to move a range of older cases through the system.
This kind of targeted scheduling matters because it helps reduce the pile-up of appeals waiting for attention, especially when delays stretch across months and years.
Aggravated defilement leads the list with 16 appeals, followed by murder at 14. Six appeals relate to obtaining money by false pretence, while manslaughter accounts for five cases.
Aggravated robbery and embezzlement each have four appeals, and several other offences are represented with smaller numbers, including forgery and theft of a motor vehicle, both with two appeals. Causing grievous harm is also listed with two appeals.
Other single-appeal matters include rape, trafficking in children, possession of classified drugs, abuse of office, simple robbery, corrupt solicitation, and making false entries.
Misryoum understands that representatives from the Uganda Prisons Service, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and defence lawyers are all attending the session, reflecting the hearing’s focus on adversarial review for people challenging convictions.
In an effort to improve how quickly cases are processed, the Judiciary says the exercise is part of broader steps to reduce backlog and support the timely delivery of justice. The plan, Misryoum notes, involves streamlining the docket and clearing matters that cannot proceed.
The Judiciary has previously flagged that while it is handling more than 167,353 cases, delayed delivery of judgments remains a major challenge, and sessions like this are one way to chip away at that pressure.
By bringing multiple categories of appeals before the bench in a short window, the three-day session could help keep the justice timetable from slipping further, even as the overall workload remains heavy.