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That plot you bought already has two owners

What Kenyan land buyers need to know about title fraud, parallel titles and the rights they never knew they had. By Ibalai Vallary Advocate Trainee · Ibalai Legal You did your homework. You paid for an official search. It came back clean, your name went on the title, and you finally had a plot to build on. Then, six months later, a fencing crew shows up with their own title deed for the exact same parcel issued years before yours, by the same registry. You did not forge anything. You did not skip the search. But the person who sold to you may not have owned what they sold, and the law does not automatically protect you just because you believed you were buying something real. This is not an edge case. It is standard operating procedure in Kenya's land market. A May 2026 report on a Nairobi land fraud syndicate takedown put an estimated KES 4.5 billion in property value in active fraud litigation in Nairobi courts, with more than 300 irregular-transfer complaints filed wi...
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Goods Once Sold Are Not Returnable. Says Who?

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  The Law You Live, Part One            By Tim Munyi Mugo, Advocate  It is a Saturday afternoon on Luthuli Avenue. A young man has just bought a phone. The seller demonstrated it beautifully. Screen bright, speakers loud, camera sharp enough to count the pores on your face. Money changed hands, the phone was wrapped with the speed of a relay baton exchange, and everyone smiled. By Sunday morning the phone will not charge. By Sunday afternoon it will not switch on. On Monday our friend returns to Luthuli, where the seller listens with genuine sorrow, then points at a small sign hanging behind the counter and hidden in receipts, the same sign that hangs in shops from Kongowea to Kamukunji, usually printed in a font that has seen things.  Goods once sold are not returnable. Most buyers walk away at this point, defeated by the authority of receipt, or laminated paper. What almost nobody on that street knows is that a law older than the ta...
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THE FAMILY REUNION THAT WAS A TRAP: UNPACKING REPUBLIC V PETER MWAURA MUGURE

By Kimberly Odumbe | Advocate Trainee | | Mugure v Republic (Criminal Appeal E078 of 2021) [2026] KECA 937 (KLR) | Introduction On 14 July 2026, the High Court at Milimani brought to a close one of Kenya's most disturbing family murder cases in recent memory. Justice Martin Muya sentenced former Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) Major Peter Mwaura Mugure to life imprisonment for the murder of his estranged wife, Joyce Syombua Maua, and their two young children, Shanice Mugure Mwaura and Peter Mwaura Junior (alias Prince Michael). The case, which began with a chilling disappearance in October 2019 and stretched across nearly seven years of investigation and trial, is significant not only for its brutality but for how the court characterised it in law: as an act of both infanticide and femicide. For a platform tracking the evolution of gender-based violence jurisprudence in Kenya, this judgment offers a clear window into how the courts are naming, and punishing, family annihilation....
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UNDERSTANDING HOW SENTENCING WORKS

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What remission means, mitigation, what rights survive beyond walls and options after conviction - What Most People Get Wrong   By Ibalai Vallary Advocate Trainee · Ibalai Legal This one started with a question someone posted online “Jela huwa wanahesabu usiku na mchana kama separate days?” The answer is NO. However, that question opened a door to something bigger most Kenyans have no idea how sentencing and imprisonment actually work. From the moment, the judge says guilty, to what  happens behind those prison walls and to what the law says you can still do about it. The  moment  the  judge  says “Guilty” The gavel comes down guilty. The sentence is pronounced ten years, fifteen years or life imprisonment. The room shifts, some people weep or some go silent. And the person in the dock and often their family in the gallery is left trying to process words they may not fully understand. ...
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