Muthoni was released from a seven-year jail sentence to be retried for selling her husband's cow.

In this story: Cow brought equivalent of $120 RELATED STORIES, SITES

November 6, 1999
Web posted at: 1:16 p.m. EDT (1716 GMT)

From Correspondent Alphonso Van Marsh

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- In a case considered a litmus test of Kenya's record on human rights, a 30-year-old woman has been temporarily released from a seven-year sentence and granted a new trial.

Her crime? Stealing her husband's cow.

She claims her husband has threatened to burn her alive if she ever comes home. The husband declined to speak with CNN.

So Elinah Muthoni, penniless and facing another trial and possibly 14 years in jail, left prison and took her four children to her mother's house in a rural Kenyan village.

"My husband was sick, and I had to pay to transport him to the doctor," the banished wife told CNN. "I had no food for the children. I was taking care of the cow so I sold it to pay off the debt."

Cow brought equivalent of $120

The cow brought 9,500 Kenyan shillings, about $120. Muthoni's husband of 11 years took her to court. She had no lawyer.

The judge ruled that the cow, and everything else on the farm, is the husband's property and sentenced Muthoni to seven years for theft. She is her husband's second wife

Muthoni says she sold this cow to buy food for her four children and pay debts

Muthoni was released on bail after her situation caught the attention of Kenyan women's rights groups who cried foul. She now has a lawyer, who is a women's rights specialist, representing her for free.

There are no statistics, but some women's groups say 60 percent of Kenyan women don't know they have matrimonial property rights, and most can't afford a lawyer.

"Women bear the brunt of human rights abuses in this country," Muthoni's defense lawyer Judy Thongori said. "First of all, you'd never hear of a man who has been charged with selling his cow."

"Kenya is a chauvinistic, paternalistic society whereby people tend to think that the wife is a subject of the husband," said Peris Karanja of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, which runs a free legal aid clinic in Nairobi.

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