Word: kibaki
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...Kenya requires judges to impose the death penalty on those convicted of armed robbery, murder and treason. But death row inmates find themselves relegated to criminal purgatory because no one has been hanged - the legally required method of capital punishment - since 1987. President Mwai Kibaki said that commuting all of the country's death sentences would help alleviate the "undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma and anxiety" that comes with being consigned to death row for an "extended stay." (See pictures of violence in Kenya...
...Kibaki insisted during his announcement Monday that the decree does not mean courts will stop issuing death sentences. Indeed, judges will still be obligated to do so even for seemingly minor offenses, including cases of armed robbery where thieves have stolen chickens while wielding nothing more than wooden clubs. Still, the move allows Kibaki to sidestep a thorny political issue: While the death penalty remains popular among Kenyans, he has been loathe to incur criticism from human rights groups by signing execution orders...
...Experts and rights activists have welcomed the new decree, but are greeting Kibaki's justification with some skepticism. Just as likely a culprit for the inmates' "undue mental anguish" is the fact that conditions in Kenya's prisons are, by most accounts, absolutely horrifying. Rights groups have repeatedly documented cases of death, torture, malnutrition and severe overcrowding within Kenya's prison system. (Read: "In Kenya, Charges of High-Level Conspiracies...
...Experts say the more persuasive reason for the decision is, as Kibaki noted in his statement Monday, that Kenyan law confines those sentenced to death to their cells, barring them from taking part in prison work or study programs. A presidential press service statement said those rules had led to "idleness and subsequent negative impact on prison discipline as recently witnessed in some facilities...
...Kibaki's announcement is good for the prisons as well as the prisoners, said Keriako Tobiko, director of public prosecutions. With one signature, the president has added 4,000 bodies to the work rolls of the country's undermanned and underfunded prisons department. "The Prisons Department has been unable to utilize over 4,000 prisoners who have been idle within their precincts," Tobiko told The Standard newspaper. "Reducing the sentence is the first step...