New Vision

UGANDA -death penalty to be abolished - Death Sentence to Be Replaced

The Government will soon replace death sentences on capital offences with long jail terms, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Janat Mukwaya has said.

Mukwaya was speaking at a workshop on human rights for local councillors in Mukono district held at Ntenjeru sub-county headquarters recently.

"The Government is considering scrapping the death sentence on capital offences because it does not give the culprit time to reform. Long jail terms will replace death penalty," she said.

Mukwaya said the change would enable lower courts to handle similar cases because the high courts had a large backlog of cases.

Mukwaya said offences such as defilement and rape would be reduced from death sentence to life imprisonment to allow the culprits to reform.

"Death sentences don't give people fair and just treatment. Everybody deserves a 2nd chance," she said.

Participants at the workshop called on the Government to sensitise the people more on human rights.

Kampala: THE recent disclosure by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Mrs Janat Mukwaya, that the death penalty is itself on the brink of facing the guillotine is perhaps the best human-interest story of the year.

According to Mrs Mukwaya, the Government is considering scrapping the death penalty currently imposed on those convicted of what is known as capital offences. The death penalty will then be replaced by lengthy terms of imprisonment.

The story in the New Vision headlined "Death sentence to be replaced" gave only defilement and rape as examples of cases for which the punishment would be changed from the death sentence to imprisonment.

But in my contention, the abolishion of the death sentence has to affect the whole range of offences for which the death penalty applies under the current laws.

This should include treason, murder, robbery with aggravation, et cetra.

The imposition of the death sentence is, in the 21st century, a very old-fashioned mode of punishment, akin to Moses' Old Testament law of "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth."

The argument for such punishment is that it gives the victims or their relatives, in the case of murder, the satisfaction that the culprit has been paid in his own coins. It is also argued that, death being so frightening, the execution of culprit acts as a deterrent.

But there is no evidence to suggest that the death sentence has any deterrent effect. In fact, a man who commits aggravated robbery considers it safer to murder anybody in the house who sees him in a bid to destroy the evidence of an eye-witness.

It is a fact that cases of murder are more numerous in the  United States , where the death penalty still exists, than in  Britain where it was abolished several decades ago.

You cannot, for example, argue that Christopher Kasoma, the man who hacked his eight children to death in Wakiso last week, had the time to think about being sent to the gallows when convicted.

He was determined to terminate the lives of his children as well as his own. As Mrs Mukwaya pointed out, the death penalty does not give the convict any opportunity to reform, whereas that should be the basic purpose of all forms of punishment.

Another negative aspect of the death penalty is its irreversibility. Once the death sentence is carried out, nothing can be done even if enormous evidence emerges which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the man who was executed was innocent.

Imagine what would have happened in South Africa if Nelson Mandela had been sentenced to death and executed by the cruel apartheid regime, a sentence which he escaped miraculously by a whisker.

Twenty-six years in jail was indeed a very long time, but not too long for Mandela to come out and become South Africa 's first black President.

The theory that every killer must pay for his crime by being killed cannot pass the humanitarian criterion for social administration. It is because humanity has to consider bandits, thugs, and other criminal perpetrators such as Joseph Kony as part of mankind, that amnesty is made available to those who kill, maim and torture their own people.

It is against that backdrop that I would appeal to the Government to hasten the scrapping of capital punishment for any offence under the sun.

Of course, it will take sometime to amend all the relevant laws on our statute books. But there is one thing the President can do immediately which does not need any amendment of any law.

Let him commute all death sentences pending against everybody on the death row to life imprisonment (or in some special cases various terms of imprisonment) and ensure that the hangman is out of business in  Uganda .

Kampala

THE death penalty will still be imposed on men who defile girls below nine years and those guilty of capital offences.

The Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs has clarified that the death sentence will only be replaced with life imprisonment for those who defiled girls between 10 to 17 years.

The New Vision last Friday reported that justice minister Janat Mukwaya told Mukono district councillors during a workshop that the death sentence would be scrapped.

A statement from the ministry said Mukwaya was only responding to a participant's question from why a boy who defiles a girl is treated differently when both were regarded as children under the Children's Statute.

The statement signed by Dennis Byaruhanga, an aide to Mukwaya, said the law would be amended to recognise both girls and boys as children and hence create equality in the way they are handled.

It said said the law on defilement would be amended so that the death sentence still applied to those who defile children below nine years whereas those who defile children between 10 and 17 years would face life imprisonment.

The statement said the lower courts would handle defilement cases involving girls between 10 and 17 years.

  UGANDA:

Good news: Death sentence is going -- THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

The recent disclosure by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Mrs Janat Mukwaya, that the death penalty is itself on the brink of facing the guillotine is perhaps the best human-interest story of the year.

According to Mrs Mukwaya, the Government is considering scrapping the death penalty currently imposed on those convicted of what is known as capital offences. The death penalty will then be replaced by lengthy terms of imprisonment.

The story in the New Vision headlined Death sentence to be replaced gave only defilement and rape as examples of cases for which the punishment would be changed from the death sentence to imprisonment.

But in my contention, the abolishion of the death sentence has to affect the whole range of offences for which the death penalty applies under the current laws.

This should include treason, murder, robbery with aggravation, et cetra.

The imposition of the death sentence is, in the 21st century, a very old-fashioned mode of punishment, akin to Moses Old Testament law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

The argument for such punishment is that it gives the victims or their relatives, in the case of murder, the satisfaction that the culprit has been paid in his own coins. It is also argued that, death being so frightening, the execution of culprit acts as a deterrent.

But there is no evidence to suggest that the death sentence has any deterrent effect. In fact, a man who commits aggravated robbery considers it safer to murder anybody in the house who sees him in a bid to destroy the evidence of an eye-witness.

It is a fact that cases of murder are more numerous in the  United States , where the death penalty still exists, than in  Britain where it was abolished several decades ago.

You cannot, for example, argue that Christopher Kasoma, the man who hacked his eight children to death in Wakiso last week, had the time to think about being sent to the gallows when convicted.

He was determined to terminate the lives of his children as well as his own. As Mrs Mukwaya pointed out, the death penalty does not give the convict any opportunity to reform, whereas that should be the basic purpose of all forms of punishment.

Another negative aspect of the death penalty is its irreversibility. Once the death sentence is carried out, nothing can be done even if enormous evidence emerges which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the man who was executed was innocent.

Imagine what would have happened in South Africa if Nelson Mandela had been sentenced to death and executed by the cruel apartheid regime, a sentence which he escaped miraculously by a whisker.

Twenty-six years in jail was indeed a very long time, but not too long for Mandela to come out and become South Africas 1st black President.

The theory that every killer must pay for his crime by being killed cannot pass the humanitarian criterion for social administration. It is because humanity has to consider bandits, thugs, and other criminal perpetrators such as Joseph Kony as part of mankind, that amnesty is made available to those who kill, maim and torture their own people.

It is against that backdrop that I would appeal to the Government to hasten the scrapping of capital punishment for any offence under the sun.

Of course, it will take sometime to amend all the relevant laws on our statute books. But there is one thing the President can do immediately which does not need any amendment of any law.

Let him commute all death sentences pending against everybody on the death row to life imprisonment (or in some special cases various terms of imprisonment) and ensure that the hangman is out of business in  Uganda .