On July 30, the Court of Appeal in Kenya unan­i­mous­ly held that manda­to­ry death sen­tences are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, vio­lat­ing the right to life and inflict­ing inhu­man pun­ish­ment since the law does not pro­vide indi­vid­u­als the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. As a result, hun­dreds of pris­on­ers will be giv­en new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings at which they will be able to present rea­sons why they should be spared a death sen­tence. New pro­ce­dures will have to be adopt­ed for con­duct­ing such hear­ings. The old law required a death sen­tence as the only pun­ish­ment for defen­dants con­vict­ed of mur­der. The Court of Appeal also spoke strong­ly against extend­ed incar­cer­a­tion on death row, stat­ing that hold­ing a per­son on death row for more than 3 years would be unconstitutional.

(Press release, The Death Penalty Project (London, England), July 30, 2010). Kenya has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 23 years. See International and Time on Death Row.

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