ON THE MORNING of Monday, September 25, at the sand-colored Kenyan High Court in downtown Nairobi, two dozen camouflaged soldiers leaped from the rear of a green truck and escorted Cholmondeley inside the building, along with dozens of other prisoners facing hearings that day. Dressed in a khaki linen suit and tie, Cholmondeley entered the courtroom in handcuffs and sat cross-legged on a scuffed wooden bench, blue socks protruding from brown leather boots. His face was expressionless; the only sign of stress was his hand clenched around one opened handcuff. His lean, towering father sat in the row just behind the lawyers; he was joined by Cholmondeley's girlfriend, Dudmesh, and several friends. In the back row, arms folded on the edge of a wooden railing, sat Njoya's widow, Serah.

A single judge, Muga Apondi, wearing a white powdered wig and red-and-black robes, listened to a half-dozen other cases before Cholmondeley's. (In accordance with British jurisprudence, which Kenya's legal system is based on, this judge will determine the defendant's guilt or innocence, without using a jury.) Then Kenya's director of public prosecution, Keriako Tobiko, declared, to a hushed courtroom, in both English and Swahili, "On the tenth of May 2006 at the Soy sambu farm... [Thomas Cholmondeley] murdered one Robert Njoya ... We shall prove that the deceased was running away when shot by the accused. We shall also prove that in an attempt to conceal his crime . . . the accused tampered with the scene after shooting the deceased and two dogs. We shall prove the accused was not under any attack ... We shall prove the accused attacked the deceased and his companions as a retaliation or revenge for trespassing or poaching on his land."

For the next four days, the prosecutor and Cholmondeley's defense attorneys grilled half a dozen witnesses. Peter Gichuhi Njuguna, 28, who was with Njoya when he was shot, testified that the men "were carrying the carcass [of an impala] to a nearby tree" when gunfire erupted without warning. "We heard a loud bang. The sound was coming from our right. When we heard the gunshots we started to run . . . We waited for a while, but we never saw [Njoya]." Carl Tundo said that, after relieving himself in the bush, he emerged to find Cholmondeley on one knee, aiming his high-powered rifle, firing four times with two-second intervals between each shot. "I was scared of whatever was in the bushes that Tom was shooting at . . . then I heard Tom shouting for me to run and get the car. 'I have hit someone by mistake,' he yelled," Tundo said. He went on: "Tom was with the man tying his handkerchief around [Njoya's] groin to try to stop the bleeding. He was talking to the man telling him to calm down."

The court also heard testimony from Steven Koigi, farm manager at Soysambu, who painted a portrait of deteriorating security at the ranch in the months before Njoya was killed. "Many people have been shot at the farm, many times, and since February, managers have been robbed by unknown people," he said. "The farm had witnessed several cases of poaching, theft of fencing wires, and illegal charcoal burning." Then, after more back-and-forth testimony that seemed only to add to the murkiness surrounding the shooting, the trial was adjourned until October 30, and Cholmondeley was returned to prison.