East African attorney general Jacob William Barth considered that juries in Kenya were biased in favour of Europeans.
Kane described Watts as "a rough, tougher than an unpolished diamond, he drank whisky and smoked 'King Stork' cigarettes both in excess".
[1] By 1918, Watts employed a farm manager, another European named Cyprian Betchart (surname sometimes rendered as Betschart or Betschhart).
[3]: 483 About an hour after Betchart and Ogola left the embankment, the smoke from the fire was spotted by Kipsony arap Mania, who was walking along the railway.
A post-mortem by South Asian police sub-assistant surgeon Wilayatt Shah determined strangulation was the cause of death but noted multiple injuries resulting from a severe beating.
[3]: 484 Judge Maxwell stated that he thought the jury could only have reached its verdicts by discounting the evidence of all of the black witnesses.
[3] The attorney general of East Africa, Jacob William Barth, considered that European juries in the colony gave excessive benefit of the doubt to Europeans on trial, he wrote to the colony's chief secretary and noted that "A jury ... is very prone in this country ... to give a European accused the benefits of any possible contradiction that can be made to the evidence of native witnesses for the Crown"[3]: 484 The British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society wrote to the Colonial Office over the case.
[5] The Watts and Betchart case was followed by other murder trials similar in nature and result, such as that of Langley Hawkins in 1920 and Jasper Abraham in 1923.
These cases raised concern in London over the widespread practice in the colony of Europeans flogging their black employees.
[3]: 492–495 The Devonshire White Paper of 1923 ordered that the interests of black Kenyans be placed above those of European settlers, but had little practical effect.
Later reforms under Governor Sir Joseph Byrne, which made him unpopular among the European settler population, reduced the discretion available to judges on sentencing.
European public opinion in the colony remained firmly in favour of the harsh treatment of black Kenyans for decades.
[2] The author C. S. Nicholls in Red Strangers: the White Tribe of Kenya (2005) states that Watts was involved in a second case of alleged murder of a black man, of which he was acquitted.