Proponent of the bill seeking to repeal the death penalty, Francis-Xavier Sosu, says life imprisonment is sufficient punishment to replace the death penalty sentence.

According to him, his demand for the repeal of the death penalty is not geared at freeing those in Ghana’s condemned cells, but instead to commute their sentence to life imprisonment.

“The advocacy here is not to free prisoners or to free offenders. The case is not that people who commit offences that will carry death penalty should be freed. That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that life sentence is punishment enough.

“You know, many people have not had the chance to travel to prisons in Ghana. If you go to Nsawam prisons and you visit where people live in the prison and you visit the condemn cells where people who are convicted for these crimes are kept, you’ll probably will think a bit differently,” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express.

Ghana has not executed anybody on death row in 30 years despite the death penalty remaining on the statutes book.

According to the Madina MP, keeping the death penalty on the statutes book without implementing it is evidence enough of the country’s rejection of the capital punishment thus the need to repeal it.

He noted that the country’s continuous maintenance of the law also goes against several international agreements and moratoriums it has been signatory to calling for the banning and removal of death penalty laws on statute books across the world.

Buttressing his arguments on PM Express, he added that the current system where death row inmates are not executed for their crimes denies both the families of victims and the criminals closure.

“The reality today is that if you were convicted of any of the crimes that carry death penalty, you’re confounded to prison and you’re not killed. That is the reality. And that approach leaves two loose ends. One, the victim of the crime and the family members of the victim never would have closure because if you say somebody should be killed by hanging and the person is kept in prison and not hanged, if I were in court and I was a family of the victim who has passed away or any other crime that was charged and the court says that ‘you’re hereby sentenced to death by hanging’ and you’re not hanged, not one year not two years, not three years, ten years, you’re still in prison, I don’t have closure that’s the first one. Secondly, the person who has been convicted and sent to prison also has no closure,” he said.

He has called on the government to either join him have the law repealed or carry out the executions as ordered by the courts.

“So it’s two things, it’s either we have the capacity, the temerity to kill the people or if we don’t want to do it then we don’t need the law. That is what it means.”