[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 7



NIGERIA:

Big Debate May Herald End of Punishment


3 Nigerian MPs have stepped in to end years of political inertia over
ending the death penalty in Africa's most populous nation, forcing a
parliamentary debate and vote on their Private Members Bill for abolition.

National Assembly officials still have to give a firm date for the bill's
first reading and debate. But sources told IPS that it was expected to be
tabled for reading within the next 3 months.

"Nobody can say when the bill will be debated until it is listed for
debate. But I believe within the next few months action will start on the
bill and Nigeria is likely to join the ranks of abolitionist countries
before the end of the tenure of the present House (2010)," a National
Assembly official, who declined to give his name for publication, told IPS
on telephone from the capital Abuja.

The already-tabled bill seeks to abolish the death penalty for crimes
ranging from murder to armed robbery. If passed, some 500 death row
inmates would have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The
threat of the gallows would also be removed from thousands of others
currently awaiting death penalty trials.

Nigeria's death penalty laws had failed to deliver on all three goals they
were supposed to address -- reformation, retribution and deterrence, the
Bill's chief sponsor, Friday Itulah, has argued in support of his
initiative. Itulah and the bills 2 other co-sponsors -- Samson Osagie and
Patrick Ikhariale -- are members of the ruling People's Democratic Party
(PDP).

"The question is how can you reform someone -- enable him to become a more
useful person in the society -- who is sentenced to death?" Itulah asked
with apparent irony.

"The idea behind the policy of retribution is to inflict severe punishment
for something seriously wrong that somebody has done.

"(But) in this country, people have been sentenced to death for offences
that did not involve the taking of the life of another, offences such as
mutiny, trafficking in currencies and treasonable felony," Itulah argued.

He added: "This policy erroneously assumes that all persons convicted of
these serious crimes committed the offences. But people are sometimes
punished in error for the offences they never committed."

Olawale Fapohunda, managing partner of the Legal Resources Consortium, a
Lagos-based NGO, believes many people in Nigeria may have been punished or
executed for offences they did not commit.

"The challenges presently faced by our criminal justice system are such
that we cannot guarantee fairness in the application of the death
penalty," Fapohunda told IPS.

"Expunging the death penalty from our laws is just one step on the road to
achieving a criminal justice reform in Nigeria," he said.

Fapohunda, whose organisation has been fighting for seven years for an
abolition bill to be tabled in parliament, is one of the most experienced
rights activists and lawyers in the country. He was secretary of a recent
presidential commission on the reform of the criminal justice system.

He argues that hysteria rather than facts have fueled the calls for yet
stiffer penal sentences and the retention of the death penalty.

"We have a prison population of 40,000. Put this against our population of
140 million, you may agree that the sums simply don't add up. Either the
hullabaloo about the state of crime in Nigeria is false or the police are
simply not catching the offenders," he said.

He believes that capital punishment is not a deterrent to serious crime.

"The solution to crime will never be the killing of robbers. The
government needs to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the
poor in our society. While poverty is no excuse for crime, implementing a
coherent, sustainable and well-thought out poverty reduction strategy will
certainly go a long way towards creating an equitable society," he said.

Lawrence Quakar of the Human Rights Law Service believes the abolition of
the death penalty would result in a big drop in the number of most serious
crimes committed in Nigeria.

Robbers sometimes kill their victims to eliminate anyone who could later
testify against them, he argued to IPS.

So far, the news of the abolition bill has attracted little comment. But
this is likely to change quickly as soon as a parliamentary debate is
underway.

"With the sensitive nature of the matter of death penalty in the country,
the bill will surely generate a lot of controversy in the House. But if we
must follow the trend in many countries that have abolished death penalty,
the bill may have its way,'' predicted James Ogenyi, a Lagos-based civil
servant.

Most opposition is likely to come from the Muslim communities,
particularly in the north of the country where Islam Sharia law was
introduced in some states almost a decade ago.

Muhammad Yahaya, executive director of the Democratic Action Group based
in the north state of Kano, said he opposed the bill.

"It is like legalising crime. The current rate of killings either through
robbery or religious riots shows that human life means nothing to us. As
far as I am concerned, Nigeria is not ripe for the abolition of death
penalty,'' Yahaya told IPS.

Quoting the Koran, the activist said, he who kills should also be killed
in punishment. "If a person knows he will be pardoned after committing
such a crime, he will not have any regard for human life."

Although Nigeria claims to have observed an unofficial moratorium on
executions since 1999, Amnesty International (AI) has reported that it has
evidence of some executions in the past two years in the northern state of
Kano. AI claims the execution warrants were signed by the state governor,
Malam Ibrahim Shekarau.

The Civil Liberties Organisation, a major NGO, told IPS that it was
possible that secret executions had also taken place in Enugu state,
southeastern Nigeria.

The newspaper Daily Trust, published in the capital Abuja, recently
printed an opinion article by Adamu Adamu accusing pro-abolition MPs of "a
colonial hangover" in attempting to abolish the death penalty.

"We should have no business campaigning for the abolition of the death
penalty. Rather, we should campaign for its extension  Confirmed, willful
killers in this land must be cut down, irrespective of what they do to
them in Europe," Adamu wrote.

(source: IPS)






UGANDA:

Court to hear death penalty appeal


The Supreme Court will today begin hearing arguments in a case that is set
to determine whether the death penalty should be imposed on murder
convicts.

Ms Susan Kigula and 416 other convicts on death row, in a case filed
against the attorney general, have appealed against 2005 Constitutional
Court decision that fell short of scrapping the death penalty from Ugandas
criminal justice books.

The 417 convicts, all of them condemned for murder, are challenging the
constitutionality of the death penalty.

Their lawyer is expected to argue that the death penalty is cruel, inhuman
and degrading, according to documents before the Supreme Court.

But the government wants the Supreme Court to retain the death penalty as
the mandatory sentence for murder and other serious crimes. The
government's legal team is expected to ask the Supreme Court to nullify
all the decisions of the Constitutional Court.

In June 2005, the Constitutional Court reached a decision that was largely
favourable to the convicts, most of whom had been on death row for more
than 5 years.

In a majority judgement, the court ruled that the automatic nature of the
death penalty for murder and other offences was unfair as it did not allow
the convicts an opportunity to mitigate their death sentences.

The court also outlawed inordinate delays by the government in carrying
out death sentences, saying all convicts who had spent at least 3 years on
death row were entitled to have their death sentences commuted to life
imprisonment. The decision nullified the death sentences on all 417
prisoners.

Now, a decision by the Supreme Court would determine, once and for all,
whether the death sentences on the 417 individuals should be set aside.

The death penalty is currently carried out by hanging, and the 417
prisoners say that those on death row often wait in torment for
unreasonable lengths of time before execution. According to prison
records, at least 377 people have been legally executed by hanging since
1938.

(source: The Daily Monitor)