{"id":1997,"date":"2018-04-19T19:09:36","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T19:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-death-penalty-worldwide.pantheonsite.io\/new-report-finds-that-malawis-traditional-leaders-oppose-the-death-penalty-favor-rehabilitation\/"},"modified":"2020-06-04T10:16:15","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T10:16:15","slug":"new-report-finds-that-malawis-traditional-leaders-oppose-the-death-penalty-favor-rehabilitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/new-report-finds-that-malawis-traditional-leaders-oppose-the-death-penalty-favor-rehabilitation\/","title":{"rendered":"New Report Finds That Malawi\u2019s Traditional Leaders Oppose the Death Penalty, Favor Rehabilitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 18 April 2018, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and Malawi\u2019s Paralegal Advisory Services Institute (PASI) released their report on\u00a0“Malawian Traditional Leaders\u2019 Perspectives on Capital Punishment<\/a>” before a group of public officials and stakeholders in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n

The report analyses data from surveys of 102 traditional leaders in villages across\u00a0Malawi<\/a>. Clifford Msiska, the National Director of\u00a0PASI<\/a>, informed an audience in Lilongwe that over ninety percent of traditional leaders surveyed did not support the use of the death penalty to punish individuals convicted of murder.\u00a0 Only six traditional leaders stated that death was the appropriate penalty for murder. The rest preferred a term of years, life imprisonment with opportunity for early release, or (least frequently of all) life imprisonment with no opportunity for release.<\/p>\n

The report grew out of the Malawi Resentencing Project. Following the Malawi Supreme Court\u2019s decision to overturn the mandatory death penalty in\u00a0Kafantayeni and others v Attorney General<\/em>, the inmates sentenced under the now-unconstitutional law each received new sentence hearings.\u00a0 Of the more than 150 prisoners who were resentenced, 125 have now been released after serving their sentences.<\/p>\n

In preparation for the resentencing hearings, PASI paralegals observed that many of the village chiefs supported the prisoner\u2019s release.\u00a0 This ran counter to the popular view that traditional leaders supported the death penalty.\u00a0 Since no data existed to support or refute this assumption, Cornell Law School\u2019s\u00a0Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide<\/a>\u00a0teamed up with PASI and the London-based NGO\u00a0Reprieve<\/a>\u00a0to carry out a survey to ascertain traditional leaders\u2019 views on the death penalty.\u00a0 The survey focused on traditional leaders presiding over villages to which released prisoners had returned, sometimes decades after they had been sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

The Cornell team that analyzed the survey responses found that traditional leaders opposed the death penalty for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 The most common explanation was rooted in the belief that people can change\u2014and that prison is a place for reform. Many noted that rehabilitation is impossible if a prisoner is executed. As one traditional leader noted, \u201cThere is no reform in death.\u201d\u00a0 Many traditional leaders also expressed concerns that innocent people could be hanged.<\/p>\n

Traditional leaders also see the death penalty as enormously taxing on the community. Many families did not know whether their loved ones had been executed. For one family, the imposition of the death sentence was so shocking that his mother \u201cmourned him for 2 weeks as if he was already dead.\u201d Other families became convinced that the prisoner had\u00a0<\/em>been put to death. Many leaders noted that, rather than providing a sense of justice in the community and acting as a deterrent to others, losing a member of their community to a sentence of death \u201ctraumatized\u201d local communities which have been left \u201cin shock\u201d and \u201cdepressed\u201d. Members of close communities like those where many of the prisoners returned are often the indirect victims of a death sentence.<\/p>\n

Closely linked to their conviction that prisoners are capable of reform is the notion that returning prisoners benefit the community and their family once released. Released prisoners have, according to the traditional leaders, served as mentors for young men and women who might be tempted to commit crime. One released former prisoner, Byson Kaula\u2013who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death\u2013now works full time at Malawi\u2019s only halfway house, counselling other recently released prisoners.<\/p>\n

Another man, Mtilosera\u00a0Pindani, has been elected traditional leader in his home village since his release. Countless others have married, had children, provided support to ailing parents, built schools, maintained roads, started businesses, and provided food from their farming.\u00a0 The story of Malawi\u2019s released prisoners is a story of individual redemption, and of communities made whole by their return<\/p>\n

Click image for full report:<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 18 April 2018, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and Malawi\u2019s Paralegal Advisory Services Institute (PASI) released their report on\u00a0“Malawian Traditional Leaders\u2019 Perspectives on Capital Punishment” before a group of public officials and stakeholders in Lilongwe. The report analyses data from surveys of 102 traditional leaders in villages across\u00a0Malawi. Clifford Msiska, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,74,71,76,86,94,75],"tags":[80,98],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-access-to-justice-fr","category-news-fr","category-opinion-fr","category-advocacy-fr","category-africa-appeals-project-fr","category-publications-fr","category-research-fr","tag-access-to-justice-fr","tag-opinion-fr"],"better_featured_image":{"id":306,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":440,"height":350,"file":"2019\/11\/6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi.png","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi-300x239.png","width":300,"height":239,"mime-type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi-300x239.png"},"thumbnail":{"file":"6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi-150x150.png","width":150,"height":150,"mime-type":"image\/png","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi-150x150.png"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":1997,"source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/6a00d8341cfde953ef01b8d2ec8418970c-800wi.png"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"external_author":"Sandra Babcock","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2007,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/2007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}