117 Zim inmates on death row

This was revealed at the Constitutional Court in Harare Wednesday where Shadreck Chawira and fourteen others are challenging the constitutionality of their continued incarceration while they await the hangman’s noose.

Harare Central Prison is the only prison designed for death row inmates but some of the prisoners sentenced to death were now being kept at Chikurubi Maximum Prison because of shortage of space, the court heard.

Justice Luke Malaba, leading a full bench of the Constitutional Court, reserved judgment on the case.

The fourteen inmates are seeking an order to have their cases remitted for resentencing so that their sentences can be commuted to life sentences.

The lawyer for the inmates, Tendai Biti, told the court that his clients had been on the death row for periods ranging from three to 21 years and had suffered enough punishment that there was no need for them to be executed.

He said their continued incarceration was in violation of sections 51 and 53 of the Constitution and infringed on their rights to life and human dignity, which were the most important in the Bill of Rights.

Biti said he had 14 separate affidavits from the inmates explaining the conditions in prisons and the psychological torture that they suffered as a result of their placement on death row.

Given that his clients had served lengthy prison terms with various problems associated with incarceration in Zimbabwean prisons, Biti submitted that the correct remedy was to for the court to declare unconstitutional the continued incarceration and the blanket imposition of the life

sentence.

“The court can make any order which is in the interest of justice… refer back to the High Court or resentencing taking into account the delay and what would have taken place over the years,” he said.

State Counsel Olivia Zvedi said the severity of the crimes committed by the applicants warranted the treatment they were getting from the State, including being kept in solitary confinement for more than 20 hours per day.

Biti later told journalists that he would soon be challenging the death penalty as it was discriminatory and unequal.

“We would like to challenge the death penalty and we believe we will do so this year once parliament has passed amendments to the Criminal Procedures Amendment Act,” he said.

“Some of the judges also don’t believe in the death sentence. The fact of the matter is that there are some people, like the Minister of Justice, now the vice president, who feel that it is not right, they just don’t have the courage to say let us outlaw it .The Constitution itself is discriminatory, women cannot be executed but men can be. Anything that is discriminatory and unequal is unconstitutional.”

ANA

File photo: Gallo Images