When Francis Lesilampa was arrested and charged in July 2025 for allegedly publishing a fabricated M-Pesa message about Samburu County Governor Jonathan Lelelit, he faced up to 10 years in prison or a Ksh 5 million fine. Today, he is a free man, not because he was found innocent of the facts, but because the law used to charge him no longer exists.
In a landmark ruling delivered on June 10, 2026, Maralal Senior Principal Magistrate Hon. Temba A. Sitati officially dismissed the criminal charges against Lesilampa, declaring them illegal, unconstitutional, null and void.
This local acquittal is the direct, real-world fallout of a much larger national earthquake: the historic March 6, 2026, Court of Appeal judgment that struck down the controversial Sections 22 and 23 of the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (CMCA) of 2018.
Lesilampa’s legal troubles began after he published a post on the Samburu Digital Network Facebook forum. The post alleged that Governor Lelelit had attempted to buy his political loyalty with a Ksh. 7,000 M-Pesa transfer, complete with fabricated transaction text messages. The prosecution swiftly charged him under Section 23 of the CMCA, which criminalized the publication of false information calculated to cause panic or discredit a person’s reputation.
For nearly a year, the trial crawled through the Maralal Magistrate Court. Witnesses testified, including Governor Lelelit himself, who took the stand in November 2025 to deny the allegations.
However, before the trial could conclude, the legal ground beneath the prosecution collapsed.
On March 6, 2026, the Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE) won a massive victory for digital rights. In an appeal spearheaded by digital rights advocates, Court of Appeal Justices Patrick Kiage, Aggrey Muchelule, and Weldon Korir struck down Sections 22 and 23 of the CMCA, declaring them unconstitutional.
As detailed by BAKE following the ruling, these sections had long been weaponized to silence journalists, bloggers, and citizens who exposed corruption or questioned authority. The appellate judges noted that the laws were akin to unguided missiles and created a trap for innocent citizens by failing to clearly define what constituted “false,” “misleading,” or “panic.”
The Court of Appeal ruled that the government cannot act as the sole referee of reality in a democratic society. It protected the right to be wrong, noting that the fear of a jail cell shouldn’t stifle legitimate debate, satire, or honest journalistic mistakes.
Armed with the new Court of Appeal precedent, Lesilampa’s lawyer, Mr. Lenkidi Mpapa, filed an application in May 2026 to have the case against his client thrown out.
Delivering his ruling, Hon. T.A. Sitati relied on the universal legal maxims of nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without law) and nulla poena sine lege (no punishment without law). The Magistrate noted that while Lesilampa’s charges were perfectly lawful when he took his plea in July 2025, the offense officially ceased to exist in law on 6th March 2026.
“Consequently, any further prosecution of the accused person in the present case would be a perpetuation and an administration of grave and irreparable injustice on him,” ruled Hon. Sitati, before ordering Lesilampa’s immediate release and the refund of his Ksh. 20,000 cash bail.
Lesilampa’s acquittal sets a powerful precedent for other pending cybercrime cases across the country, but as BAKE has cautioned, the internet has not become a lawless zone.
1. The Shift to Civil Liability: The Court of Appeal emphasized that disputes over truth and reputational harm belong in civil courts, not criminal dockets. If Governor Lelelit, or any citizen, feels their reputation was genuinely damaged by a false post, the remedy is a civil defamation lawsuit (suing for financial damages), not sending the police with handcuffs.
2. Increased User Responsibility: With the threat of state prosecution removed, the burden of truth falls back on the public. While citizens can no longer be jailed for “fake news,” they can still be sued into bankruptcy in civil courts.
3. State Surveillance Remains: While Sections 22 and 23 are dead, the government still retains its sweeping investigative powers under Sections 48 to 53 of the CMCA. Police can still obtain court warrants to search devices, seize data, and conduct real-time surveillance. Furthermore, laws against cyber-harassment (Section 27) remain firmly intact.
For now, the Maralal ruling stands as a testament to the domino effect of digital rights advocacy. By striking down a law in Nairobi, the Court of Appeal ensured that an ordinary citizen in Samburu won’t spend the next decade in a prison cell for a Facebook post.
Read the full judgement HERE.