On June 18, the Commissioner for Prisons, Joseph Etima,...

On June 18, the Commissioner for Prisons, Joseph Etima, said he supports the scrapping of the death penalty as a punishment for capital offenses. He, however, said reformists should not hurry to call for its scrapping if there is no appropriate alternative punishment for offenders. Etima and 9 prisons officers were appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, chaired by the MP for Bukholi North Wandera Ogalo, to discuss concerns raised in the 1997 Human Rights report about their department. "The negative aspect about the death penalty is that if new evidence came up the suspect would have been executed already. Besides, executing a murderer would not compensate for the person one has lost," Etima said.