Supreme Court judge, Justice Gabriel Pwamang has hinted at a proposed sentence for murder.
Currently, all murder cases are liable to life imprisonment depending on the discretion of the judge.
According to him, the judicial service is considered a proposed definite sentence for the crime.
“In absence of a definite sentence a lot of people who otherwise may have served a term have been sentenced to life imprisonment“ he noted.
According to him, murder cases must be categorized and appropriate punishment assigned.
“A woman enduring an abusive relationship may one day try to defend herself and end up killing the spouse in self defence, we should not punish such a person like the one who premeditated the killing, “ he said when Amnesty International together with other Civil Society Organisation paid a courtesy call on the Chief Justice on the abolishment of the death penalty
Death penalty is a capital punishment instituted by the constitution which requires that certain crimes are punishable by death.
“We have done a lot of work with the prison service and through my years with prisoners, I can say that oftentimes such laws are aimed at the marginalized in society“ he said
Drawing the attention of the judge to some development in the justice delivery system, Oppong Kwarteng said oftentimes, prosecutors mislead accused persons into accepting that they are guilty with the hope of being considered by the judge.
“ I don’t know why but oftentimes, some prosecutors mislead accused persons to accept the charge of being guilty in the hope that the judge will temper justice with mercy, other times, they misconstrue the statement by suspects and unfortunately we do not have audiovisual machines for the judges to listen in to the accused statement, such issues are left unattended to“ he bemoaned
Justice Pwamang acknowledged the concerns raised, however, he insisted that there are appropriate departments within the court to address such issues.
“ Despite the fact that there have been instances where accuse persons connive with justice delivery actors to circumvent the system, there is an investigative department within the court to investigate such instances“ he noted.
The push for scrapping the death penalty is supported by the President, CrimeCheck Foundation, Legal Resource Center, CHRAJ, POS Foundation the Judiciary, and Member of Madina Constituency, Francis Sosu.
The bill has been tabled before parliament through a private members bill and subsequently referred to the appropriate committee for review.
