A Justice of the Supreme Court and a Judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (AfCHPR), Sir Dennis Dominic Adjei, has said the continent's mandatory death penalty regimes violate obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
He has, therefore, called on African states to honour the human rights treaties they have ratified.
Delivering a public lecture at the Christ Temple Campus of the Central University, Abossey Okai, to mark the 20th anniversary of the operationalisation of the AfCHPR, Justice Adjei explained that once a country ratified a human rights treaty, it subordinated its own constitution to that treaty and could not invoke domestic law to escape the obligations it had voluntarily assumed, citing the death penalty to illustrate this principle in practice.
The public lecture was held in Justice Adjei's honour.
The event, organised in partnership with the African Court, was on the theme “The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights at Twenty: Advancing Constitutional Justice, Human Rights and Rule of Law in AAfrica."
The school presented a citation to Justice Adjei for his contribution to the justice sector, both in the country and on the continent.
Precedent
Citing the AfCHPR's 2019 decision in the case of Ally Rajabu and Others v. United Republic of Tanzania, Justice Adjei explained that the court had found Tanzania's mandatory death penalty for murder incompatible with the Charter, on two distinct grounds.
The first ground, he said, was that mandatory sentencing violated the right to life.
He said a law that compelled a judge to impose death automatically upon conviction, without any room to weigh the circumstances of the offence or the offender, breached Article 4 of the Charter, which guarantees the right to life.
"It is wrong because you are depriving the court's right to determine whether the court should give the person a number of years, life, or whatever," he said.
"Once the law dictated the outcome in advance, it offends Article 4 of the African Charter.
That is right to life," he added.
Secondly, he explained that the method of execution of death sentences also violated human dignity.
Justice Adjei said regardless of whether a sentence was mandatory, the AfCHPR had held that hanging, electrocution and death by firing squad all amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 5 of the Charter, which guarantees respect for the dignity inherent in every human being and expressly prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment.
Ghana
On Ghana, Justice Adjei said Parliament had abolished the mandatory death penalty for murder through the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, replacing it with life imprisonment, but that capital punishment remained mandatory for treason and high treason under the 1992 Constitution, as well as for certain offences under the Armed Forces Act, 1962 (Act 105).
He said these surviving provisions still exposed Ghana to both risks identified in the Rajabu ruling, since the sentence for those offences remained mandatory and its execution would still be by hanging or firing squad, notwithstanding that they were entrenched in the Constitution.
He explaindd that the AfCHPR did not sit as an appellate body over domestic courts but only tested a state's laws and decisions against the treaties it has ratified.
He said the court, where a conflict was found, ordered the state to bring its laws into alignment, including through amendment of the offending constitutional or statutory provision.
Judicial excellence
The Dean of the Central Law School, Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, described Justice Adjei as one of Ghana's most distinguished jurists, saying his service on both the Supreme Court and the AfCHPR reflected judicial excellence and had enriched Ghanaian and African jurisprudence.
The Vice-Chancellor of Central University, Professor Samuel Kwasi Dartey-Baah,said the anniversary was a celebration of an enduring ideal that justice must transcend borders and that human dignity is universal.
