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Africa / Crime Watch

136 persons sentenced to death in Ghana since 2010

136 persons sentenced to death in Ghana since 2010

Although no Ghanaian president has signed the death warrants of convicts on death row since 1993, Ghana’s High Courts continue to sentence convicts to death, frequently in cases of murder.

According to Amnesty International’s most recent Death Sentences and Executions report, three people will be sentenced to death after a trial in 2020.

The figure is the lowest for an entire year in the last decade.

According to Amnesty International, the year 2012 saw the highest number of people sentenced to death by Ghanaian courts, 27, since 2010.

The data from the Prisons Service stated, the majority of those sentenced to death were for murder, and the majority of the convicts were men.

According to Amnesty International’s latest report, published on April 21, 2021, while executions globally declined for the third consecutive year, some significant developments occurred in the year under review, including America’s resumption of executions after 17 years and Egypt’s 300% increase in the number of executions undertaken.

The Donald Trump administration executed ten people in six months in 2020.

“The unprecedented challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic did not deter 18 countries from carrying out executions in 2020.” While there was a general downward trend, some countries pursued or even increased the number of executions, indicating a chilling disregard for human life at a time when the world’s attention was focused on protecting people from a deadly virus,” Amnesty International said.

According to Amnesty International, while countries such as Ghana continue to use the death penalty, “the overall picture in 2020 was positive,” with over 483 executions recorded worldwide in contrast to over 657 cases in 2019.

By the end of 2020, Ghana had approximately 160 people on death row, five of whom were women.

Six foreigners are among them: a Beninois, two Burkinabes, and three Nigerians. Between March and June 2020, nine death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life in prison.

 

Ghana lags behind Nigeria, Egypt, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and five other African countries in terms of the number of death sentences handed down in a year.

Many calls have been made for the State of Ghana to abolish capital punishment in its laws in order to champion human rights, but those calls have not resulted in any positive results.

The United Nations General Assembly passed its eighth resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in December 2020. An overwhelming majority of UN member states voted in favour of the resolution.

The resolution was supported by 123 countries, while it was opposed by 38.

Ghana was one of the 24 countries that did not vote.

 

Source: CitiNews


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