Three convicted bank robbers were sentenced to death

Three convicted bank robbers were sentenced to death. The sentence was passed just a day after the Government, which says it is opposed to the death penalty, freed 28 death row convicts and commuted another 195 sentences to life.
Does one sense a disconnect between the intentions of a reformist Government and the actual letter of the law? The Kibera court really had no choice but to hand out the sentences. The minimum sentence prescribed for some offences is death. But the hangman's noose in Kenya was last used in the mid-eighties.
President Moi, though never a crusader against the death penalty, could never, since the last executions, bring himself to sign the final execution orders.
President Kibaki's Government came to power with the pledge to abolish the death penalty. Justice and Constitutional Minister Kiraitu Murungi is one of Kenya's more ardent right-to-life campaigners. In his days on the Opposition benches in Parliament, he moved two unsuccessful Motions that would have done away with the idle hangman.
His colleague in charge of prisons, Home Affairs Minister Moody Awori, has turned out to be one of the more enthusiastic campaigners for penal reform ever witnessed in high places. He is even thinking about allowing conjugal visits!
But where will administrative actions become more solidly grounded in real reform? There is a need for major amendments to the laws and regulations that govern management of the penal system.
There is a need to look afresh at the penal code that unwisely dictates a mandatory death sentence instead of leaving the decision to the courts. And there is a need for specific constitutional provisions affirming the right to life.
It is an issue that cannot be handled through piecemeal administrative decisions or legislative amendments. Hence the urgency of getting constitutional review back on track.