A mobile phone belonging to the murdered brother of former Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere landed Dr Clement Munyao, a neurosurgeon, at the Kamiti Maximum Prison.
Dr Munyao is serving a life sentence for murder. His only crime was purchasing a secondhand phone from a colleague who worked at the Kenyatta National Hospital Mortuary while working as a medic at KNH.
In 2009, police were pursuing the killers of Iteere’s brother Moses Gituma, a Central Bank of Kenya Employee.
He purchased the phone for his daughter, who was then a student at Moi University.
She left for school only to give her boyfriend the phone. Police tracked him down and arrested him. When questioned, he said the phone was his girlfriend’s.
They were both arrested, and the daughter explained that she got the phone from her father. They were transported to Nairobi, where Dr Munyao explained how he purchased the phone from a mortician who he knew.
Sadly, In 2009, Munyao was sentenced to 30 years in jail and his decision to appeal the case four years later failed after he failed to prove his innocence and was sentenced to death.
Even with his medical background, he feels he has lost a lot while locked up in jail, although he still practices attending to fellow convicts.
“I am a medical practitioner who graduated from Nairobi University in 1980 with a Bachelor in Medicine and Surgery. I then graduated with Masters in Human Medicine and Pathology at the same university in 1987 and a Masters in Forensic Medicine in Scotland in 1991,” he told Inooro TV’s Njera-ini Ciitu programme.
He is also a paralegal at Kamiti. He never lets his death row inmate status interfere with his daily operations at the prison.
“Being in the paralegal aids me to practice medicine,” he says.
