The International Commission of Jurists Kenyan chapter has renewed the call to abolish the death penalty and have related laws repealed.
In marking World Day Against Death Penalty on Sunday, the lobby said it was time to end death sentences as a way of upholding the sanctity of life.
The last time a crime convict was sentenced to death and hanged was 1987 and the victims were the 1982 attempted coup plotters. Since then, death sentences are mostly committed to a lifetime in jail.
According to the lobby, thousands of inmates are on death row in Kenyan jails, with 597 being women.
The Supreme Court in 2018 held that “the mandatory nature of the death sentences was inconsistent with the 2010 Constitution".
The case was brought by the ICJ and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
But the President retains the discretion to order the hanging of the death row inmates at any time.
On Sunday, ICJ argued that despite the Supreme Court ruling, convicts were still receiving the traumatising sentence because of a lack of policy or legal framework abolishing it.
The worldwide campaign against the penalty has borne fruit after 106 countries abolished it for all crimes. Another 142 countries have abolished it in both law and practice.
The lobby holds that the penalty “constitutes a violation of the rights to dignity, freedom from torture and more importantly, the right to life.
“It is this obligation to respect and protect the right to life that both the state and the individual pledge to uphold under the Constitution and other relevant international human rights instruments.”
In 2003, then-President Mwai Kibaki commuted 223 death sentences to life imprisonment, including 28 prisoners who were subsequently released after serving between 15 and 20 years on death row.
In 2016, President Uhuru Kenyatta commuted the death sentences of all 2,747 prisoners on death row. They comprised 2,655 men and 92 women.
The ICJ has also been consistent in pushing for the abolition of petty offences.
