Uganda’s penal code provides for 15 capital offences

Uganda’s penal code provides for 15 capital offences: nine separate offences grouped under the collective heading “treason” and offences against the State, rape, defilement, murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping.
In March 2002, the Parliament passed an anti-terrorism bill that imposes a mandatory death sentence for terrorists.
In April 2007, the Parliament passed a law that prescribes the death penalty for those who intentionally transmit the HIV virus.
On 3 April 2009, the Parliament unanimously created a new clause in the “Prevention of Trafficking of Persons Bill 2007” providing for the death penalty as a maximum sentence to a person convicted of human trafficking.
On 20 December 2012, after intense international criticism, President Yoweri Museveni has spoken out against the punitive clause of an anti-gay bill before Uganda’s Parliament that called for hanging people who have consensual homosexual sex. "I have been telling these people [pro gay activists] that nobody will kill or prosecute them for being homosexual, but there should be no promotion of homosexuality," Museveni said at the St. Paul's Cathedral in Kampala. On 30 November, Parliamentarian David Bahati, who originally authored the anti-gay bill, said that a new version of the proposed legislation had “moved away from the death penalty after considering all the issues that have been raised.” “There is no death penalty,” he told the Associated Press.
On 21 June 2012, the Uganda Prisons Services (UPS) has spoken out against the death penalty, saying the purpose of prisons is to rehabilitate wrong-doers, and not kill them. “We are challenging the issue of death penalty,” UPS spokesperson, Frank Baine, said at the Uganda Human Rights Commission two-day Forum to promote the rights of detainees held at Imperial Royale Hotel that started on 20 June. Baine said prisons are for rehabilitating and not hanging prisoners. “Our mandate is to have safe custody which is humane. We reform and re-integrate, not hanging.” “Prisoners are part of our family. By the time you hang, it is like you are hanging your own,” he said. The UPS spokesman said hanging prisoners traumatizes both staff and inmates and he pointed out that although death penalty is a constitutional matter, they are advocating for its change.
In recent years, many commutations of death sentences have been arranged by the High Court of Uganda, following a January 2009 Supreme Court ruling, which declared unconstitutional the mandatory application of the death penalty. The court decided that the mandatory death sentences should be commuted to life imprisonment.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court also ruled that death sentences be commuted to life imprisonment after three years in jail, in a move rights groups hailed as a major step towards ending capital punishment. The Court upheld the death penalty as constitutional but ruled that “a delay beyond three years after a death sentence is an inordinate delay.” The case was brought against Uganda’s Attorney General by a prominent Kampala human rights organization, the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, on behalf of 417 death row inmates, who filed a petition in 2008 challenging the death sentence on the grounds that the method of execution by hanging is cruel, the condemned are subjected to mental torture and that the majority of prisoners were jailed for years long after their sentences had been passed.
The seven-person panel of judges dismissed the appeal and instead recommended that parliament define the methods of executing the condemned prisoners to address complaints that the methods of execution were cruel and inhumane. “On the issue of constitutionality of hanging, it is cruel, inhumane and degrading and affects the convicts and executioners,” the panel said. “Since the death sentence is provided for in the constitution, we are concerned over the way the death sentence is carried out.” The Supreme Court justices also urged the legislature to “re-open the debate on the desirability of the death penalty in our constitution.” President Yoweri Museveni had praised judges for refusing to scrap the death penalty.
As of November 2009, there were 637 prisoners on death row. Many of them had been on death row for over 10 years and there were some that had been awaiting execution since the 1970’s. Hundreds of people sentenced to death had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment, following the Supreme Court ruling.
On 22 March 2012, President Museveni pardoned an Indian prisoner, Sharma Kooky, who spent 12 years behind bars at Luzira Maximum Security Prisons for murdering his wife, Renu Joshi. The President granted the Indian prisoner pardon on humanitarian grounds. According to the law, the President has no powers to intervene in criminal prosecution. However, under article 121 of the 1995 constitution, through the advisory committee of prerogative of mercy, the President is mandated to exercise his rights to release prisoners. President Museveni had made his last presidential pardons in 2009 when he released Obote’s former Internal Affairs Minister Chris Rwakasisi and Abdullah Nassur, the former Governor of the Central Province during Amin regime.
According to prison records, at least 377 people, including one woman, have been legally executed by hanging since 1938. Last executions were carried out on 3 March 2003, when Pte Richard Wigiri and then Ptes Kambacho Ssenyonjo and Alfred Okech were executed by firing squad after a military court found them guilty of two different murders.
In 2011, there were at least 15 new sentences of death handed down. No death sentence was recorded in 2012.
As of 21 June 2012, there were 473 people on death row.
On 10 October 2011, Uganda was reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. The Ugandan head of delegation, Henry Okello-Oryem, Minister of State for International Affairs, stated that the culture and traditions of the Country legitimise the existence of provisions criminalising same-sex relations and allowing capital punishment. He outlined that the death penalty is recommended as punishment only for the most serious offences. Yet, it is used only at the discretion of judge. According to the Minister, a popular referendum supported the existence of the death penalty in the Constitution. On 16 March 2012, in its response to the recommendations received, Uganda rejected those on the abolition of the death penalty and/or formally declaring a de-facto moratorium. Maurice Peter Kagimu Kiwanuka, Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations Office at Geneva, reaffirmed that the country-wide consultative process had not supported this recommendation; however, the ruling of the Supreme Court stated that a death sentence that was not enforced within three years was automatically commuted to life imprisonment without remission.
On December 20, 2012, Uganda voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.