Second Appeals and Evidence in Sserwamba v Uganda

The Supreme Court decision in Sserwamba David Musoke v Uganda, Criminal Appeal No. 6 of 2023, [2026] UGSC 24, delivered on 8 June 2026, is best understood as a case about the limits of second appeals in criminal proceedings. It is tempting to read it only as a banking fraud case, because the facts are serious and the sums involved are striking. Yet its wider value lies in the Court’s treatment of evidentiary complaints after both the trial court and the Court of Appeal had already considered the record. The decision appears to confirm a fairly strict position. By the time a criminal matter reaches the Supreme Court on a second appeal, the appellant must identify a genuine legal error. A general complaint that the evidence was wrongly assessed will usually not be enough.

The case arose from a major fraud at Equity Bank Uganda. Sserwamba David Musoke, who had worked as operations manager at the Oasis Mall branch, was prosecuted together with other accused persons after large sums were withdrawn from customer accounts without proper authority. The prosecution alleged that the withdrawals were made to look like ordinary transactions by South Sudanese customers, even though the account holders had not authorised them. The amounts said to have moved through the scheme included USD 700,000, USD 500,000 and USD 250,000. On the prosecution account, the case was not limited to theft from bank accounts. It also involved the later movement, concealment and use of funds in ways that pointed toward money laundering.

At trial, the Anti Corruption Court convicted Sserwamba and other accused persons. The trial judgment was delivered by Hon. Lady Justice Margaret Tibulya. The Court of Appeal later upheld the conviction and sentence. Sserwamba then took the matter to the Supreme Court. The panel has been publicly reported as including Justice Percy Night Tuhaise, Justice Elizabeth Musoke, Justice Stephen Musota and Justice Christopher Madrama Izama. Justice Tuhaise’s reasoning is particularly important because the Court treated the appeal as one that sought, in substance, to reopen factual findings while presenting them as questions of law.

The legal issue can be put in plain terms. Could Sserwamba use a second appeal to challenge his conviction by arguing that the lower courts relied on hearsay, admitted improper evidence, and drew the wrong conclusions from the material before them? Or were those complaints, at their heart, factual disputes that had already been dealt with by the trial court and the Court of Appeal? The Supreme Court had to decide whether the appeal disclosed a point of law, a serious misdirection, or a miscarriage of justice. Without that, the Court would not be sitting as a third court of facts.

The Court dismissed the appeal. It accepted that the lower courts had been entitled to rely on the prosecution evidence and that the evidence, when taken together, linked Sserwamba to the fraudulent withdrawals, the movement of money and the concealment or use of proceeds. The evidence was not only one item standing alone. It included bank records, testimony from investigators, video identification material, recovery evidence and asset tracing. The Court seems to have viewed the prosecution case as a chain rather than a scattered collection of accusations. Once that chain had been accepted by the trial court and reconsidered by the Court of Appeal, the appellant needed a stronger legal reason for Supreme Court intervention.

The rule from the case is that a second appeal in a criminal matter is confined to questions of law. This does not mean that evidence is irrelevant at the Supreme Court level. Evidence may still matter where the complaint reveals an unlawful admission of evidence, reliance on inadmissible material, a wrong direction on the burden of proof, a breach of fair trial rights, or a conclusion that no properly directed court could reasonably reach. But if the complaint is only that one witness should have been believed less, or that one document should have carried less weight, the matter is likely to remain factual. The Supreme Court will not normally reopen such issues just because the appellant disagrees with the result.

That distinction may sound technical, but it has real consequences. Criminal cases often turn on uncomfortable factual questions. A witness may be unsure. A record may be incomplete. A piece of electronic material may need explanation. In a banking fraud case, investigators may use account statements, teller records, internal approvals, camera footage, recovery notes and testimony from bank staff. A convicted person may honestly feel that the court read those materials unfairly. Still, the appellate structure gives the first appellate court the central duty of re evaluating the evidence. The Supreme Court’s role is narrower. It asks whether a legal wrong occurred, not whether every factual point could be argued again from the beginning.

The decision also protects the hierarchy of appellate review. If every second appeal became a full factual rehearing, the Supreme Court would slowly become an ordinary evidence review court. That would weaken the finality of criminal litigation and blur the different functions of trial courts, first appellate courts and the final court. The trial court sees witnesses directly and assesses their manner, consistency and explanation. The Court of Appeal has the duty to reconsider the record. The Supreme Court then intervenes where law requires it. This structure is not perfect, and one may still worry about cases where a factual error hides inside a legal formula. Even so, the structure is likely to serve both fairness and finality when properly applied.

The financial crime aspect of the decision is also worth noticing. Fraud and money laundering prosecutions rarely depend on one dramatic piece of evidence. They are often built from ordinary looking documents and movements of money. A bank statement, a withdrawal slip, a suspicious transfer, a recovered item or a purchase made soon after the loss may not prove the case alone. Together, however, they may tell a story that is difficult to explain innocently. Sserwamba shows that appellate courts may uphold convictions where the prosecution has built a coherent chain from the loss, through the transactions, to the accused person and the proceeds. The Court did not appear to require each piece of evidence to be decisive in isolation.

There is also a practical point about restitution. The Supreme Court upheld the consequences requiring refund of the stolen funds. That matters because financial crime is not only about imprisonment or the formal label of conviction. It is also about whether the victim can be restored and whether crime is allowed to remain profitable. In embezzlement and money laundering cases, a serious prosecution should not stop at proving that money was lost. It should trace where the money went, identify the persons who handled it, connect the proceeds to assets where possible, and place enough material before the court to justify compensation or recovery orders.

The case fits within Uganda’s wider anti money laundering and asset recovery jurisprudence. The earlier trial judgment in Uganda v Sserwamba David Musoke and others had already attracted attention because it has been described as Uganda’s first successful money laundering conviction under the Anti Money Laundering Act, 2013. The 2026 Supreme Court decision adds something different. It does not only affirm a financial crime conviction. It clarifies how far an appellant can go when attempting to challenge evidence on a second appeal after two courts have already accepted the prosecution case.

For defence lawyers, the lesson is quite direct. A ground of second appeal should not simply say that the lower courts failed to evaluate the evidence. That may be true in some cases, but the ground must show why the failure is legal in character. Was inadmissible evidence relied on? Was the burden of proof shifted? Was the standard of proof diluted? Did the first appellate court fail to perform its duty? Did the trial court ignore a mandatory legal safeguard? Those are the kinds of questions that give an evidentiary complaint legal force. Without that discipline, the appeal may look like a request for the Supreme Court to try the case again.

For prosecutors, the case is almost a lesson in case construction. A financial crime case should be built like a chain. The accused must be connected to the transaction. The transaction must be connected to the loss. The loss must be connected to the complainant. The proceeds must be traced through later movement or concealment. If recovery is sought, the recovery evidence must connect back to the original loss. In Sserwamba, the strength of the prosecution case appears to have been that the evidence did not stand in isolated pieces. It formed a broader narrative of unauthorised withdrawals, movement of funds and attempted concealment.

For judges and scholars, the case is useful because it shows the uneasy but necessary relationship between appellate restraint and fair trial protection. Restraint should never become indifference to injustice. The Supreme Court can and should intervene where a conviction rests on a serious legal defect or where the Court of Appeal has failed in its duty. Yet restraint also has a rule of law function. It respects the work of lower courts, protects finality and prevents criminal litigation from continuing indefinitely on factual disagreement alone. Sserwamba may not answer every difficult question about evidence in second appeals, but it gives a clear warning. At the Supreme Court level, an appellant must show law, not merely dissatisfaction with facts.

Source note. This article is based on Sserwamba David Musoke v Uganda, Criminal Appeal No. 6 of 2023, [2026] UGSC 24, Supreme Court of Uganda, judgment delivered on 8 June 2026, with reference to the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2013, the Trial on Indictments Act, and the earlier trial decision in Uganda v Sserwamba David Musoke and Others. It is prepared for public legal education only and should not be treated as legal advice for any criminal appeal or financial crime matter.

Suggested citation

Ronald Serwanga, "Second Appeals and Evidence in Sserwamba v Uganda" East Africa Legal Insight (2 July 2026).