ABSTRACT
On 21 January 2009 the Supreme Court of Uganda held that the mandatory death sentence for any crime was unconstitutional for violating the offender’s right to a fair trial, in particular, the right to adduce any mitigating factors at the sentencing hearing for the court to impose an appropriate sentence. After the abolition of the mandatory death penalty two critical issues came to light: one, for the first time in Uganda’s sentencing jurisprudence courts started imposing sentences ranging between 20 and 70 years; and two, the Supreme Court declared that the provision of the Prisons Act which provided that for the purposes of calculating remission of sentence, imprisonment for life shall be deemed to be 20 years’ imprisonment should be interpreted to mean that an offender sentenced to life imprisonment had to be imprisoned for the rest of his life and not merely for 20 years. This chapter analyses the above two developments.
