Ghana agrees to abolish death penalty

Ghana has finally agreed to abolish the death penalty, a government White Paper on the Constitutional Review Commission Report shows.

The Commission was set up to review the country’s 1992 Constitution and make recommendations for amendments. The Commission submitted its report to the government in December 2011 and the government issued a White Paper in June 2012. In the Paper, the government agreed with some of the recommendations, but also disagreed with some.

On the death penalty, it says, “Government accepts the recommendation of the Constitution Review Commission that the death penalty in Article 13 of the Constitution be completely abolished and that the penalty be replaced with imprisonment for life. The sanctity of life is a value so much engrained in the Ghanaian social psyche that it cannot be gambled away with judicial uncertainties.”

No one has been executed under the law since 1993 and currently there are 138 persons including four women on death row in the country’s prisons.

On pre-trial detention, however, the government rejected the Commission’s recommendation that Article 14 of the Constitution should be amended to reduce the period of pre-trial detention from 48 hours to 24 hours.

The government gave the following reasons:

(a) experience, since the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution has shown that where arrests are made on a Friday for good reasons, legal challenges have beenraised in relation to bringing the accused to court within 48 hours;

(b) this situation arises because the next sitting of the court is often on a Monday where the 48 hours would have lasped;

(c) it is also instructive as the report indicates that relatively more endowed economies such as the United States of America, France, Germany and South Africa still maintain the 48 hour rule and

(d) resource constraint will not make it possible to limit the pre-trial detention to 24 hours.

The now dissolved Commission completed a nation-wide consultation with journalists Tuesday August 14, 2012 and it is expected that the Report and White Paper will be put before Parliament for further deliberations. However, some of the amendments to the Constitution would have to go through a referendum.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi