KAMPALA: ‘280 inmates locked up without sentences’

By EPHRAIM KASOZI.

About 278 condemned prisoners are incarcerated without sentences, four years since their punishments were commuted by the Supreme Court, a High Court Judge has said.

Justice David Wangutusi of the Anti-Corruption Division of the High Court said following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Susan Kigula case in 2009, only 40 convicts have had their death sentences mitigated, while a larger number of approximately 278 remain incarcerated. He said this during the roundtable on Parliament and Penal Reform in Kampala.

“Some trial judges left the High Court either due to death, retirement, others on official duty or elevation to higher bench. So mitigation and re-sentencing arising from their decisions can only be handled by reallocation,” Justice Wangutusi said.

On proposed law

Rights advocacy body, Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), in partnership with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK organised the roundtable with a view of discussing a strategy to support the private member’s Bill to enforce the Supreme Court’s directions to abolish the death penalty.

Mr Livingstone Ssewanyana, the FHRI executive director, said the proposed law seeks to reflect on the number of cases that attract death sentence to be reduced and scrap the mandatory death penalty. According to Mr Ssewanyana, the imprisonment of people without a punishment is a violation of the rules of natural justice.

Source: Saturday Monitor (30/03/2013): http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-280-inmates-locked-up-without-sentences-/-/688334/1734176/-/gmsqab/-/index.html