The Supreme Court has overturned the nine-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in a high-profile operation involving the attempted sale of a pangolin trophy in Harare ruling that he had been wrongly treated as a criminal despite believing the trade was legal.
The case, which has wound its way through the courts for more than three years has exposed the fine legal line between fighting wildlife crime and ensuring that innocent people are not swept up in undercover operations.
Pangolins - shy, scaly mammals prized on the illegal wildlife market are among the world's most trafficked animals and locally possessing or selling a pangolin or its parts without a permit carries a mandatory minimum jail term of nine years.
But in a unanimous ruling recently, the Supreme Court said Munashe Maphosa had been convicted without proof that he knew a crime was being committed.
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The case dates back to March 2022, when police detectives, acting on a tip-off set up a sting at the corner of George Silundika Avenue and First Street in Harare.
Detective Assistant Inspector Charles Banhu posed as a buyer.
Maphosa arrived with two men from Chipinge who were carrying a pangolin trophy hidden in a blue suitcase.
One of the men made the sales pitch while another produced the animal's remains.
Maphosa sat in the front seat of the undercover police car.
Moments later, Banhu flicked his brake lights - the signal for officers lying in wait. The trio was arrested on the spot. One of their accomplices escaped and remains a fugitive.
Prosecutors argued that Maphosa was a key part of the operation: he had travelled with the others from Chipinge, used his phone to communicate with the buyer and arranged for the trophy to be stored at his uncle's workplace in Harare.
The Harare Magistrates' Court convicted him of unlawful possession under the Parks and Wildlife Act and imposed the mandatory nine-year sentence.
The High Court upheld both the conviction and the sentence saying that physical handling of the trophy was not required for someone to be guilty of possession.
But the Supreme Court took a different view.
In a detailed judgment, the court accepted that Maphsa had helped his companions try to sell the trophy. What it did not accept was that he did so with criminal intent.
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Both police witnesses conceded under cross-examination that Maphosa had never touched the suitcase and had told them he believed his friends had a permit to sell the pangolin legally.
"That defence was never rebutted," the judges noted.
While the law allows for "joint possession" and "common purpose" - meaning a person can be guilty even without holding the illegal item - the court stressed that this only applies if the person knowingly participates in a crime.
In this case, it said, the appellant acted "with an innocent frame of mind under the mistaken belief that the possession was lawful".
The judges likened his position to that of "a passer-by invited to help push-start a car when unbeknown to him it is a stolen vehicle".
"Gullibility alone does not amount to criminal intention," the ruling said.
Because prosecutors had failed to prove that the man knew there was no permit for the pangolin trophy, his conviction could not stand.
The Supreme Court set aside the High Court and magistrates' rulings and ordered that Maphosa be acquitted.
"The first accused is found not guilty and acquitted," the court declared, with two other judges concurring.
The decision means that the nine-year sentence - one of the harshest in Zimbabwe's wildlife laws - falls away entirely.
Pangolin poaching remains a major conservation crisis and courts regularly impose long prison terms on those convicted.
Maphosa was represented by Professor Lovemore Madhuku.
