A Law lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr. Kofi Abotsi, has stressed the need for the President to muster the courage to sign warrants of convicts on the death row or move for their death penalties to be commuted to life sentences. Arguing that it was the President’s constitutional duty to sign death watrants, Mr. Abotsi said the current situation where the number of convicts on death row continued to pile up in the country's prisons with some of them being kept between 10 and 15 years because no President would sign their warrants, was a violation of their (convicts) human rights and dignity, and an abuse of the 1992 Constitution. Speaking to the Daily Graphic, Mr. Abotsi said the psychological trauma people on death row went through daily, was too difficult to bear. “If you put so much on death row it invokes traumatic experience especially as they are kept under difficult conditions,” he said. He noted that whereas the constitution provided for individuals to be treated with dignity, those convicted to death were kept in extremely hard conditions. “So either they are executed or have their penalties commuted to life sentences to relieve them of the psychological trauma,” he said. Several countries use the death penalty, including China, Iraq, Iran, USA, and Saudi Arabia. However, a number of reasons had compelled many other countries to abolish the death penalty. Mr. Abotsi stated that anyone who visited the prisons would realise that people on death row were separated from regular convicts and had little or no sunshine. “They constantly live in expectation of execution which can be done any day.” Mr. Abotsi stated that failure to carry out death sentences was also an abuse of the judicial process because whereas judges continued to convict, their decisions were not carried out. He said given the fact that no one had been executed for more than a decade and a half it was unlikely that it would be implemented in future. This, therefore, created a human rights abuse of convicts. Mr. Abotsi explained that convicts who had been kept on the death row for a very long time had the right to challenge the failure of their executions. He said there was the need for the nation to decide once and for all whether or not to maintain the death penalty. “It appears to me that the death penalty is still in the statute books because of coup de tats. “I am pretty sure that if today someone attempts to overthrow the government that person will be executed,” he said. He stated that international pressure from human rights groups, the country’s own historical developments, and religious factors had all contributed to prevent the implementation of death penalties. Source: Daily Graphic