Skip to main content arrow-down arrow-tail-right arrow-triangle-right calendar camera compass download email eye facebook flag mail phone pin play send square-right tag twitter youtube badge message

Photo credit: News Ghana

Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project calls on First Deputy Speaker

  • DPP in the Media
  • 22 Jul 2022

This article was originally published in News Ghana, 21 July 2022.

Mr Saul Lehrfreund, the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Project, a United Kingdom based organization, has paid a courtesy call on Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Accra.

The call was to solicit the support of Ghana’s Parliament in the Organization’s effort to eliminate death penalty.
Mr Osei-Owusu, in his remarks, pointed out that Ghana was willing to be part of the international community in this regard by amending its law.

He said Ghana’s Parliament and Ghanaians would be guided in the course of the journey by Ghana’s culture and history; saying “we will listen to the voice of our people as we go out on this matter”.

On his part, Mr Lehrfreund pledged to assist Ghana’s Parliament to take death penalty off its statutory books.
He added that Ghana would join the majority of the world who had rejected capital punishment as an abuse of human rights, indicating that there were one 120 countries globally who had rejected death penalty with just few countries left to do so.

Mr Francis Xavier Sosu, the Member of Parliament for Madina, said Ghana had not executed anybody under the death penalty under the 1992 fourth Republican Constitution despite having it on its status books for a very long time.
“Our research shows that if we were able to do that, we would achieve 95 percent abolishing death penalty, and even if we would retain death penalty in the constitution, it would be for treason and high treason”, he stated.

Mr Lehrfreund was accompanied by Professor Carolyn Hoyle from the Oxford University, Meg Gould, Death Penalty Project, Mr Abdul-Razak Yakubu of the British High Commission and Madam Hannah Crothers Australian High Commission.

Latest news

A Lawyer Writes: Man cleared after 12 years in prison Judges find voluntary confession inherently improbable
Read More
Eyewitness News (The Bahamas) - Privy Council quashes conviction of man imprisoned due to ‘forced’ confession
Read More
PRESS RELEASE: Forced to confess - Privy Council quashes conviction in The Bahamas – describing original conviction as “unsafe and unsatisfactory”
Read More
A Review of ‘Voices from Death Row: Art as a form of Expression’
Read More
Voices from Death Row: Lincoln College to host moving art exhibition
Read More
PRESS RELEASE: Whilst out of step with international law, Privy Council rules that Jamaica’s sentencing of children is lawful
Read More
Singapore's imminent execution of Tangaraju Suppiah - Statement from The Death Penalty Project
Read More
New research exploring the motivations and pathways to committing drug crime in Indonesia
Read More
Malaysia scraps mandatory death penalty, natural-life prison terms
Read More
Malaysia set to abolish the mandatory death penalty
Read More
Privy Council clarifies the approach trial judges should adopt when explaining “intent” to juries in The Bahamas
Read More
International Women's Day Q&A: Women in Human Rights
Read More
Cayman News Service: UK court rules against closed-door legal hearing
Read More
Cayman Loop News - Justin Ramoon, sentenced for murder, gets go ahead for judicial review
Read More
PRESS RELEASE - Privy Council refuses to allow Cayman Government to hold secret hearings in prisoner transfer case
Read More
Cayman Compass - Privy Council rules against secret trial for exiled killers
Read More
Cayman Marl Road - Privy Council refuses secret hearings in Cayman prisoner transfer case
Read More
NEW op-ed: Time to scrap capital punishment in Taiwan
Read More
Privy Council: Appeal dismissed amidst serious disclosure failings
Read More
James Guthrie, impressive barrister whose work in the Privy Council included a string of landmark cases – obituary
Read More

Stay up-to-date with our work