Baraza resigns, withdraws appeal
Suspended deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza has resigned and withdrawn an appeal she had lodged at the Supreme Court to challenge the ruling of a tribunal that recommended her sacking.
"I have this 18th day of October 2012 tendered my resignation as the deputy Chief Justice and vice president of the Supreme Court of Kenya to the Judicial Service Commission," she said in her resignation letter to President Kibaki.
Ms Baraza explained that her decision was prompted by her lack of confidence in the five-judge bench that was to determine her appeal at Supreme Court.
She singled out her former boss, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, for making prejudicial remarks in a television interview endorsing the decision of the tribunal.
"Although I have preferred an appeal in the Supreme Court challenging the recommendations of the tribunal set up be your Excellency to probe my conduct, I do not see myself getting a fair and impartial hearing before the court as currently constituted. Two of the judges sat at the Judicial Service Commission which petitioned your Excellency to appoint the tribunal that probed my conduct. They cannot therefore logically and legally sit on my appeal.
"Secondly the Chief Justice in a recent television interview endorsed the tribunal's recommendations against me which are the subject of my appeal. This has compound my fears that I will not get a fair trial before a bench in which he will participate.
"I still reject the tribunal findings which I found most injudicious and not founded in known principles of law. However, our country is bigger and greater than any one of us," she said.
