An MP is seeking to replace the death sentence with life imprisonment for capital offenses.
Ugunja Member of Parliament has written to the National Assembly Speaker to approve Penal Code (Amendment) Bill saying treason, murder, robbery with violence, and attempted robbery with violence should lead to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.
He intends to replace the words “sentence to death” with “life imprisonment” in sections 40(3) (treason), 60 (Administration of unlawful oaths to commit capital offenses), 204 (murder), 296(2) (robbery with violence), and 297(2) (attempted robbery with violence) in the Penal Code.
“These inmates live each day waiting for the hangman, the cruelest and most torturous life. The death penalty not only deprives the prisoner of all vestiges of human dignity, but it’s also the desecration of the individual as a human being, it is the annihilation of the very essence of human dignity,” he said.
There are over 600 death row convicts whose fate lies in the hands of the parliamentarians who are expected to push for this amendment to the law.