SHOULD TH DEATH PENALTY IN GHANA BE ABOLISHED?
Mr. chairman, SRC executives, Judges, fellow students, ladies and gentlemen. I am for the motion that the death penalty in Ghana should be abolished. The death sentence is the predetermined and cold-blooded killing of a human being of a heinous crime committed. It is however inhuman and degrading for such punishment to be meted out in means of justice (GhanaWeb)
Mr. Chairman, in Africa, studies have proven that the practice has become a tool for political vindictiveness, as sitting presidents and head of states hide behind to prosecute their political opponents or people they see as threats to their reign as in the case of Fredrick William Kwasi Akuffo and Akwasi Amankwa afrifa along with four others at the Teshie Military range for corruption on June 26th 1974, under the regime of Flt. Leuftenant Jerry John Rawllings.
Mr. Chairman, records at the country’s prisons in 2005 indicated that 148 inmates were on death row even though since 1993, there had not been any death penalty carried out. However, in 2011, 14 persons on death row had their sentences committed to life imprisonment. This is very encouraging. It would be proper to abolish it completely from the statute books.
Prof. Ken. Attafuah, Executive Director of the Justice and Human Rights Institute, once said that the death penalty defied human rights standards and that any law that clashed with human right law must fall. However, the death penalty has not succeeded in deterring others from committing murder and so had been abolished in more than half of the countries in the world, both in practice and law.
Mr. Chairman, I think that even the executioners who squeezed the triggers to the bodies have rather committed a greater crime. Ghana has been on the fight to protect human rights in Africa. Its execution policy is a brutal exception. The punishment of death does not reverse the death of the victim.
Mr. Chairman, it costs more to execute a death sentence than leaving an offender for leaving an offender for life. This is because the cost incurred prior to and during trial, involves an endless stream of appeals and legal wrong things. For such trials special motions and extra tone for jury selection are required investigation charges also rise exorbitantly, especially by the prosecution.
Mr. Chairman, I think in place of death warrant there should be an alternative long sentence with parole. It can be described as debasing of human dignity and one which had failed to deter crime in the society. Amnesty international has contended that the death penalty was often promoted as a way to deter violence and make society safer, on the contrary, Did it deter the high school kid in Columbia from walking to school and killing his mates and teachers? Yet scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that executions deter crime more effectively than alternative sentences.
Mr. Chairman, fellow students, ladies and gentlemen, the time is now. There is a better future ahead of the guilty. We call for the death penalty to be abolished and instead a sentence of life imprisonment to be instituted for heinous crimes. THANK YOU.
