03/04/2006

Abolish the death penalty, demand DPP, Vera Chirwa

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Ishmael Wadi has urged chiefs and all Malawians to endorse the proposals that the "death sentence be abolished in the country.

He was speaking on Friday at the just ended national constitutional conference which looked at various issues Malawi Law Commission received from members of the public aimed at refining the country's Constitution.

Wadi said people who are against abolishing the death penalty should know that, government is finding it difficult to prosecute murder cases because they are too expensive and court officials have to travel to different places to prosecute the cases and the government has to meet costs for members of the jury.

' The DPP also said experience has shown that sometimes some members .of the jury do not follow proceedings properly.

' He said people should consider replacing the death penalty with life inprisonment for murder convicts.

Wadi was supporting human rights activist Vera Chirwa who told the conference on Thursday that studies had shown that the death sentence was not an effective deterrent to cases of murder.'

Chirwa, who is also a rapporteur on a special United Nations (UN) committee on death penalty, observed that some people have in the past been sent to the gallows simply because of mistaken identity,: saying the truth surfaced after the accused had already been hanged.

She described the death penalty as inhumane and degrading, saying that the accused are subjected to mental torture as they await execution.

"Not everyone who kills is a murderer. The disadvantages of maintaining the death penalty are more than the advan tages, so it is my recommendation that we think seriously on whether we still need the death sentence," she said, after narrating how the MCP government sentenced her and her husband to death on allegations that they wanted to overthrow the country's first former President Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Her husband died in prison.

Former President Bakili Muluzi never signed a death warrant for murder convicts throughout his 10-year term of office.

Section 16 of the country's Constitution says every person has the right to life and no person shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life, "provided that the execution of the death sentence imposed by a competent court on a person in respect of a criminal offence under the laws of Malawi of which he or she has been convicted, shall not be regarded as arbitrary deprivation of his or her right to life".

The country's prisons are full of people who are charged with murder but have not been taken to court for up to six years because of lack of money for the state to prosecute them.

George Ntonya