Sierra Leone Becomes 23^rd African Country to Abolish the Death Penalty

The par­lia­ment of Sierra Leone vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on July 23, 2021 to abol­ish the death penal­ty, mak­ing the West African nation of 7.8 mil­lion peo­ple the 23^rd coun­try on the con­ti­nent and the 110^th world­wide to end capital punishment. 

Pledging to sign the bill into law, President Julius Maada Bio (pic­tured) said on Twitter, ​“Today, I have ful­filled a gov­er­nance pledge to per­ma­nent­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty in Sierra Leone. I thank cit­i­zens, mem­bers of Parliament, devel­op­ment part­ners, and rights groups that have stead­fast­ly stood with us to make history.” 

In May, dur­ing a United Nations review of Sierra Leone’s human rights record, Bio’s admin­is­tra­tion pub­licly announced that it intend­ed to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Deputy Minister of Justice Umaru Napoleon Koroma said at the time that President Bio had made abo­li­tion a pri­or­i­ty so as to ​“uphold the fun­da­men­tal human rights of Sierra Leoneans.” 

“Once the leg­is­la­tion goes to par­lia­ment and gets approved, that ends the sto­ry of the death penal­ty,” Koroma told the Agence France Presse. 

The for­mer British colony’s last exe­cu­tions were in 1998, when 24 mil­i­tary offi­cers con­vict­ed of trea­son for their alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in a coup attempt were put to death. The exe­cu­tions — car­ried out in the midst of an eleven-year civ­il war that end­ed in 2002 and took the lives of 120,000 peo­ple — were lat­er found to have vio­lat­ed inter­na­tion­al human rights treaties and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. 

Sierra Leone’s 1991 con­sti­tu­tion per­mit­ted cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for aggra­vat­ed rob­bery, mur­der, trea­son, and mutiny. The new law, which applies to the 99 pris­on­ers on death row at the time of its enact­ment, replaces the death penal­ty with sen­tences rang­ing from a 30-year jail term to life imprisonment.

Just as the death penal­ty in much of the United States is con­sid­ered a ves­tige of slav­ery, lynch­ing, and Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion, it is regard­ed across the African con­ti­nent to be a rem­nant of European colo­nial laws. Sierra Leone’s death penal­ty was inher­it­ed from the crim­i­nal code imposed under British colo­nial rule. In April 2021, the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal declared the death penal­ty in the south­east African nation uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Chad abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes in May 2020. Sierra Leone’s neigh­bor­ing West African coun­tries of Guinea, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Togo also have abol­ished the death penalty. 

In March 2021, the London-based NGO, The Death Penalty Project, and the Sierra Leonean women’s rights group AdvocAid made a for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion to President Bio, urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to end the death penal­ty. AdvocAid exec­u­tive direc­tor Rhiannon Davis called the parliament’s action ​“a huge step for­ward for this fun­da­men­tal human right in Sierra Leone.” Abolition, she said, was par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for women and girls accused of mur­der­ing an abuser. ​“Previously, the death penal­ty was manda­to­ry in Sierra Leone, mean­ing a judge could not take into account any mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, such as gen­der-based vio­lence,” she told the British news­pa­per, The Guardian.

“It’s a dream come true in terms of crim­i­nal jus­tice, to actu­al­ly remove such a heinous penal­ty,” said cap­i­tal defense lawyer and Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission mem­ber Simitie Lavaly. 

In 2004, the Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission that inves­ti­gat­ed atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted dur­ing the nation’s civ­il war found that ​“suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments abused the death penal­ty to elim­i­nate polit­i­cal oppo­nents.” It called the con­tin­u­ing exis­tence of the death penal­ty in Sierra Leone ​“an affront to a civilised soci­ety” and list­ed its abo­li­tion as a human rights ​“imper­a­tive.”

“Here’s a small coun­try in West Africa that had a bru­tal civ­il war 20 years ago and they’ve man­aged to abol­ish the death penal­ty,” AdvocAid’s co-founder and for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor Sabrina Mahtani told the New York Times. ​“They would actu­al­ly be an exam­ple for you, U.S., rather than it always being the oth­er way around,” she said.