Chief Justice Martha Koome has forwarded a bill to parliament seeking to amend sections of the Penal Code, including the definition of ‘imprisonment for life’.
The Bill cited as the Penal Code (Amendment) Act, 2023, proposes a change in Section 4, that imprisonment for life will now be limited to a prison term of thirty years.
This comes after the Court of Appeal’s declaration earlier this year terming an indeterminate life sentence as unfair and a slow death sentence.
Appellate judges Pauline Nyamweya, Jessie Lessit, and George Odunga, declared that a life sentence should not mean the natural life sentence of the prisoner.
They based their ruling on the European Court of Human Rights finding that it is degrading and tantamount to inhuman punishment to have someone imprisoned without any prospect of release.
According to the proposed bill, "A person convicted of second-degree murder shall be liable to imprisonment for life."
"Any person who, by any other unlawful act or omission, causes the death of another person, commits second-degree murder," reads the Bill partly.
An unlawful omission is one resulting in culpable negligence when discharging a duty tending to the preservation of life or health.
This is regardless of whether such omission "is or is not accompanied by an intention to cause death or bodily injury."
On the other hand, persons convicted of first-degree murder shall be liable to be sentenced to death.
First-degree murder covers the intentional cause of death to someone through unlawful acts including poisoning, arson, kidnapping, torture, child abuse, terrorist acts, injury by explosive substances, burglary, and robbery.
Persons convicted of attempted robbery with firearms and second-degree robbery will also be liable to life imprisonment.
As per the Bill, second-degree robbery constitutes threatening someone one steals from with "any other form of violence to any person or property in order to obtain or retain the thing stolen or to prevent or overcome resistance to it being stolen or retained."
