Ruth Kamande, a Lang’ata Women’s Prison inmate who is serving a life sentence for stabbing her boyfriend 25 times, was among inmates and prison wardens who graduated with a law degree on Wednesday, November 26.

In a moving speech while receiving her certificate, Kamande lauded the Kenya Prison Service and the University of London in collaboration with the Justice Defenders for their commitment to rewriting stories of prison inmates by offering them a chance at education.

“We are here to celebrate this new chapter with a new story which all of you have participated in rewriting. We are here to celebrate graduands,” Kamande said in her graduation speech.

“We are not here to just celebrate graduands from the University of London, but graduands who have successfully studied law behind bars. Graduands who are well transformed, rehabilitated, and reformed. Graduands whose stories have been uniquely rewritten by you.”

She further acknowledge a beneficiary of the programme, Hamisi Nari, a former inmate who studied law behind bars and is currently a practicing advocate of the High Court of Kenya.

In preparation for the graduation ceremony, she told the Justice Defenders that she had been motivated to pursue law by former Attorney General Githu Muigai.

“Professor Githu Muigai came in and I was so touched and I said, ‘Oh my God! In this world, we still have people like this?’ So I desired to become like him,” she told the graduands.

Recalling her quest to find a good lawyer who also understood her, Kamande stated that she jumped at the chance to study law when it was offered to her.

“When I heard that Justice Defenders are offering the opportunity to instill dignity through education, I said I would try. I knew there were so many challenges because I was serving on death row but I decided to take the chance so that in future I could help somebody like Professor Githu Muigai helped me.”

Githu Muigai is the lead counsel in her latest appeal at the Supreme Court.

Since committing the murder in 2015, Kamande has frequently made the news, not only because of the gruesome crime she was convicted of but also for her striking beauty.

In 2016, she contested in the Miss Lang’ata Women’s Prison contest and won. Reports and clips from the contest thrust her into the limelight with all her appeals henceforth making the news.

During her trial, Kamande insisted that she had committed the murder in an act of self-defence following a domestic altercation with her boyfriend at his Buruburu residence.

Initially sentenced to death, her conviction was commuted to life by President William Ruto in July 2023.

Kamande was granted an opportunity to appeal her sentence at the Supreme Court in her latest request in October 2023. This decision followed a rejection of the same from the Appellate Court.