Kenya has com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of all 2,747 pris­on­ers on the nation’s death row. On October 24, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed orders spar­ing the lives of 2,655 men and 92 women who had been sen­tenced to death, com­mut­ing their sen­tences to terms of life in prison. While Kenya still autho­rizes the death penal­ty, it has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in near­ly 30 years. In August 2009, for­mer President Mwai Kibaki com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of the more than 4,000 pris­on­ers who were then on Kenya’s death row. One year lat­er, Kenya’s Court of Appeal ruled that the coun­try’s manda­to­ry death penal­ty law was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, over­turn­ing hun­dreds of death sen­tences. Muthoni Wanyeki, a region­al direc­tor of Amnesty International, praised President Kenyatta’s action, say­ing: ​“The deci­sion to com­mute death sen­tences brings Kenya clos­er to the grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of nations that have abol­ished this cru­el and inhu­man form of pun­ish­ment. It must now be abol­ished for pos­ter­i­ty.” Nearly two-thirds of the world’s coun­tries have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in law or prac­tice. Among those coun­tries that retain it, the 28 exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the United States in 2015 placed it fifth in the world behind only China (with more than 1,000 exe­cu­tions), Iran (977), Pakistan (326), and Saudi Arabia (158).

(See M. Payton, ​“Kenya com­mutes sen­tences of all death row inmates,” The Independent, October 25, 2016; J. Gettleman, ​“Kenya Spares the Lives of Everyone on Its Death Row,” The New York Times, October 24, 2016; ​“Death row con­victs get a reprieve,” The Presidency, Official Website of the President of Kenya, October 24, 2016.) See International.

Citation Guide