SOUTH SUDAN SAYS DEATH PENALTY REMAINS UNTIL CONSTITUTION AMENDED

May 3, 2013: South Sudan will keep the capital punishment in place unless amendments are introduced in the country’s constitution, the chief justice said today.
“The transitional constitution does not have a provision that prohibits [the] death penalty. This means that our judges will continue to rely on current laws until when constitutional amendment [are] made through an act of parliament", the country’s Chief Justice, Chan Reec Madut said.
Madut was speaking at an inauguration function of the new office belonging to Constitutional Review Commission whose mandate has been extended for up to two years.
The chief justice appeared to be reacting to recent reports by different civil rights activists acting together with the international human rights organisations, which called for capital punishment to be abolished.
Meanwhile, Nyok Monyrac, the Warrap state Acting President of the High Court, who in April, presided over murder related cases in Kuacjok, capital of the state, said in a separate interview that there was no alternative to avoiding capital punishment "by hanging" unless a constitutional amendment is made.
“There are three people who have been convicted in Kuacjok. They are now awaiting execution. All the processes are completed. The hearings have taken place and judgment which established reasonable grounds for sentence has been made. They have now been sentenced to death by hanging in the proceedings because it has been proved beyond reasonable that the killings were deliberate. The convicts also accepted. In fact one of the convicts said he had wanted to kill one of his targets but ended up mistakenly killing another innocent person”, Judge Monyrac explained.
Two others, he said, were sentenced for jointly stabbing a person to death with a spear in Majokanyar, a local market under administrative and territorial jurisdiction of Tonj North County, Warrap State. He cited the 206 and 207 sections of South Sudan Penal Code Act 2008 which he said states that people convicted of intentional murder should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
After the country gained independence in 2011, South Sudan was among the 111 members of the United Nations that supported a resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly that called for the removal of death penalty.
Despite the move courts in South Sudan have continued to sentence convicted murders to death rather than opting for life imprisonment. (Sources: sudantribune.com, 03/05/2013)