Kenya: East African Judges call to retain death penalty

At a widely covered conference in Nairobi, judges from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda issued a call to retain the death penalty (Kenya's Daily Nation here, Uganda's Monitor here, UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office blog here).  A joint conference, entitled "Round Table on the Death Penalty in East Africa," was sponsored by the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva, and the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, based in Kampala.  The conference was intended to pursue an abolitionist agenda, supported by several penal and judicial reform NGOs, but it made headlines for quite the opposite, when a number of judges who were invited made comments supportive of the death penalty.

According to press reports, Ugandan Justice David Musinga argued that public opinion supported the death penalty, and he was backed by Justice Emukule and Tanzanian Chief Justice Augustine Ramadhan and Lady Justice Philomena Mwilu (Kenya High Court).  Likewise, Judge Andrew Bashaija (High Court of Uganda) stated that there "should be instances reserved for the death penalty."  However, Judge Yorokamu Bamwine (Uganda) stated that a trial judge should possess ultimate sentencing discretion, which is intended to frame opposition to a mandatory death penalty.  I suspect that if asked a question narrowly, the majority of justices would oppose the mandatory death sentence, which forces judges to issue death sentences to all persons convicted of murder.

The blog post by Rob Macaire, the British High Commissioner to Kenya, is quite interesting as it explains how the organizers misjudged their audience.  In all three countries, political elites have made very strong statements against the death penalty, and Macaire and others misjudged political reaction.  A number of the conference attendees questioned British involvement.  But the mandatory death penalty in particular (now abolished in Uganda and Kenya, but not in Tanzania) is a uniquely British-derived punishment, with no historical antecedents before colonialism.  Some suspicion of the former colonial power's "rule of law" project is probably warranted, but Britain is also entitled to admit that it was wrong when it bequeathed an overly harsh and unjust death penalty law to its colonies in Africa.