Beating back the death penalty in Ghana
Yesterday (25 Jul), Ghanaian MPs passed legislation that moved the country significantly closer to formal abolition of the death penalty. It is a development that encodes de facto practice of the Ghanaian justice system for the past 30 years.
Law and practice
Ghana’s current democratic order is 31 years’ old or 27 if you start counting from the 1996 elections rather than the 1992 constitution. Either way, the absence of carried out state-sanctioned executions is one of its norms – the last such deaths occurred in 1993 (for armed robbery). This is despite the ways in which the death penalty remains on the statute books. For example:
Criminal Code (Section 46) states: Whoever commits murder shall be liable to suffer death.
Criminal Code (Section 49) states: Whoever, being under sentence of imprisonment for three years or more, attempts to commit murder, shall be liable to suffer death.
Criminal Code (Section 49A): Whoever commits genocide shall on conviction be sentenced to death.
Criminal Code (Section 194) states: A person who with, intent to commit or at the time of or immediately before or immediately after committing an act of piracy in respect of any ship, assaults, with intent to murder, any person being on board, or belonging to, the ship or injures any such person or unlawfully does any act by which the life of any such person may be endangered shall be guilty of felony and upon conviction shall be liable to, suffer death.
Criminal Code (Section 317A) states: any person who (a) without lawful authority proof of which shall be on him exports or attempts to export any gold or diamond; or (b) conceals or carries away from Ghana any gold or diamond with intent to evade any enactment relating to the export of gold or diamond, shall be liable on conviction to a sentence of death, and any gold, or diamond, in respect of which the offence has been committed shall be forfeited to the Republic.
Similar provisions are contained in the Armed Forces Act and there are currently 178 individuals on death row, according to government figures[1]. They are effaced by the 2022 Criminal Offences Amendment Bill and the 2022 Armed Forces Amendment Bill, passed yesterday, replacing references to the death penalty with ‘life imprisonment’.
Outlook: Civil opinion
To become law, the bills will have to be signed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo[2]. If and when he does so, he will be putting a punctuation point on a longstanding process drawing support from prominent strata of Ghana’s international and domestic stakeholders. For instance, the late president John Evans Atta Mills’ NDC government (2009-12) accepted recommendations to remove it from the books (but did not deliver)[3]. This time, the bill has passed with the backing of civil society figures at home and abroad like Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams and Amnesty International. However, support is not universal. Defenders of the existing law like NDC MP Cletus Avoka argue that the death penalty is an important deterrent against criminality. Equally, while removing capital punishment from the books[4] will burnish Ghana’s human rights credentials, they will not eclipse strains emanating from Ghana’s impending anti-LGBT bill[5].
—
[1] https://ghanaprisons.gov.gh/about-us/statistics.cits
[2] If and when this takes place there will still be capital punishment for high treason in the Constitution. To change that would require a two-thirds parliamentary majority.
[3] https://deathpenaltyworldwide.org/ghana-accepts-constitution-review-commissions-recommendation-to-abolish-the-death-penalty/
[4] And perhaps commuting the sentences of those currently on death row
[5] https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ghana-supreme-court-rejects-bid-block-anti-lgbtq-bill-2023-07-19/
—
We are an African-owned and managed firm delivering local knowledge supporting transformative and sustainable strategic decision-making since 2010. For more, please get in touch on advisory@songhaiadvisory.com