Judge Nixon Sifuna has declared the death penalty to be outdated, illogical, arbitrary, and incompatible with current societal ideals.
The court stated that life imprisonment is undignifying and violates the right to human dignity guaranteed by Article 28 of the Kenyan Constitution 2010.
"For the reasons stated above, I believe that the life sentence is not only archaic in today's civilization but also unreasonable and absurd." It is also an undignifying penalty, which breaches the right to human dignity protected by Article 28 of Kenya's 2010 Constitution," Sifuna stated.
The decision followed an appeal filed by Justus Ndung'u Ndung'u, who was convicted guilty of incest under section 20 (1) of the Sexual Offences Act by a Kigumo Senior Resident Magistrate.
Ndung'u is reported to have defiled his 10-year-old daughter on May 18, 2017, at the Wemba location in Murang'a County, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Justice Sifuna said in her decision that a life sentence is deceitful and tied to the death penalty. He referred to it as an interminable and unquantifiable punishment that denies the prisoner any chance of ultimate freedom.
“Whereas it is philosophically and supposedly imprisonment for a duration of time only, it is in actual sense imprisonment that is indeterminable, indefinite, uncompletable, mathematically incalculable, and therefore quantifiable only for the convict's entire remainder of his lifetime. It is a deceptive sentence, in that one commences it thinking that he will one day complete it and be released from prison.”
“Later he realizes that it is imprisonment he can never and will never complete or fully serve, no matter how hard he serves or keeps counting days. The more he races to complete it, the longer and eternally elusive it becomes. The more he serves it, the more it drifts ayonder to beyond the horizons. Logically, after serving it for long, he stops serving it and lets the sentence serve him and remain his lifestyle for the entire remainder of your lifetime!” he said.
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