- KNCHR argued death penalty is not effective in fighting crime and thus its application does not make society any safer.
- Kenya is classified as an ‘abolitionist de facto’ state, where the death penalty is still present in the law, and people are sentenced to death, but they are not executed.
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has revived calls for the abolition of the death penalty in Kenya.
The chairperson, Roseline Odede said the “wind of abolition is currently sweeping across the world” but East Africa and Kenya in particular has been lagging behind.
“KNCHR wishes to rally all stakeholders to join hands and mount more advocacy campaigns to have the death penalty in Kenya abolished,” Odede stated.
Speaking at a hotel in Nairobi during the launch of a report on the lives of prisoners on death row, Odede said several factors have informed the push for the abolition of the death penalty.
She said research has shown the death penalty is not effective in fighting crime and thus its application does not make society any safer.
Odede added that revenge is not justice.
“Revenge in the form of the death penalty only perpetuates violence and suffering and weakens the very concept of justice.”
She added that the death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The KNCHR chair further said the punishment is discriminatory and targets those from disadvantaged backgrounds who cannot afford good legal representation and have poor knowledge of the legal system.
The report "Living with a Death Sentence: Prisoners' Experiences of Crime, Punishment and Death Row" was commissioned by the University of Oxford Death Penalty Research Unit.
While state-sanctioned executions no longer occur, hundreds of people are currently living under the sentence of death and others are convicted and sentenced to death each year.
The study sampled 671 prisoners across 12 Kenyan prisons, which included not only those currently under sentence of death but also those previously sentenced to death who later had their sentence commuted.
It is 35 years since the last execution, which took place in 1987 when three people were hanged for their role in the 1982 coup d’état attempt to overthrow the late President Daniel arap Moi.
Kenya is now classified as an ‘abolitionist de facto’ state, where the death penalty is still present in the law, and people are sentenced to death, but they are not executed.
A step towards restricting the application of the death penalty was made in 2017 when the Supreme Court of Kenya ruled the mandatory death penalty to be unconstitutional.
In the case of Muratetu versus Republic, the Supreme Court concluded inter alia that the prevention of any judicial discretion in sentencing was ‘harsh, unjust and unfair’, in violation of the right to a fair trial.
In recent years, the government has reiterated a commitment to review the death penalty and the Kenya Law Reform Commission has recommended that the death penalty should be abolished.
The 2018 Task Force, established by the Attorney General to advise on the abolition of the mandatory death penalty, argued that Kenya’s criminal justice system was defective and that death sentences amounted to torture and inhumane treatment, and that the system generated a death row population with a disproportionate number of poor, uneducated and vulnerable people, as well as innocent people.
In January and February 2022, a team of 11 researchers from KNCHR interviewed 682 prisoners in 12 prisons across Kenya.
The report said studies of death-sentenced prisoners elsewhere have shown that they are not necessarily the most heinous offenders, but they are typically those who are the most disadvantaged and, in some cases, vulnerable.
“They tend to be economically marginalised, from low social classes, and poorly educated,” the report stated.