Susan Kigula: How a woman on death row changed the Ugandan legal system

The European Day against the death sentence takes place on October 10th. On that day in 2018, Susan Kigula from Uganda, who was sentenced to death in 2002, came to Utrecht in order to hold a lecture about and against the death penalty. Artist and photographer Jan Banning has befriended her, and tells about how the death sentence she received has influenced her life.
It’s July 9th, 2000, in the middle of the night. According to 21-year-old shopkeeper Susan’s statement, she woke up from a sudden blow to the neck and found she was bleeding heavily from a deep cut. Next to her, she found her husband, Constantino Sseremba, coughing up blood and lethally injured. Their housekeeper, Patience, later testified that she had seen two men running out of the flat.

Three days later, Susan and Patience were arrested. Herbert, Constantino’s son from an earlier relationship, had given an daring statement in which he accused them of murdering his father. Susan herself claims that her in-laws, with whom she had a troublesome relationship, played a dark part in all of this.

The key witness was three years old at the time of the murder. Two years later, in a courtroom in Ugandan capital Kampala, the now five year old toddler stated that his stepmother, Susan, had cut her husband’s throat with a machete while their housekeeper, Patience, held his legs.
Ze was tried – without a lawyer: she couldn’t afford one. Murder. That was what the judge, on September 11, 2002, found her guilty of. In Uganda, murderers were automatically sentenced to death, and as such the judge had no choice but to sentence her to the country’s standard execution method: the gallows.

Susan Kigula in Luzira Women’s Prison in 2010. (c) Jan Banning

In the meantime, Susan had become Uganda’s most famous prisoner after being the face of a famous court case: Susan Kigula and 417 others against the State of Uganda. In this case she, supported by the Death Penalty Project, demanded a few radical amendments of the law, most of all abolition of the death penalty.

On the 21th of January, 2009, the Supreme Court made its decision public: the death sentence would not be abolished. However, the Court also ruled that keeping prisoners that were sentenced to death on Death Row for years and years – after all, the last time someone was actually executed in Uganda was in March of the year 2003 – was a manner of torture: from then on, a death sentence would automatically be converted to a life sentence after three years on death row. On top of this, the death sentence was no longer mandatory when someone was found guilty of murder.

Thanks to Susan’s initiative, the hundreds of court cases of all prisoners with a death sentence now had to be reevaluated: judges were able to, retroactively, take mitigating circumstances into account. Since then, almost all of these prisoners have been released, after their death sentences were converted to life sentences (which, in Uganda, until recently, meant: 20 years).

The case had international implications: it played an important part in the abolishing of the mandatory death sentence for murder in the neighbouring country, Kenia.

Susan Kigula in Luzira Women’s Prison in 2013. (c) Jan Banning

Studying under a tree
Susan Kigula was imprisoned in the women’s section of Luzira Prison, on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
After reading all those procedural documents, I wanted to meet her in the flesh. I was surprised by how easy it was to get permission. Susan turned out to be a bright, intelligent and warm woman, and we immediately felt connected to one another.
In 2008, after Susan had heard that secondary education was available in the men’s section of Luzira Prison, she managed to get permission to establish her own school in the women’s prison. The open-minded head of the Ugandan prison system, Johnson Byabashaija, supported her: “I want to transform our prisons from penal institutions to corrective institutions,” he said.She received course books from family members and from the men’s prison, and with four others she started studying under a tree. One year later, all five students passed the final exams of secondary school, after which they continued to teach others. Susan’s exam results were among the best in the entire country. The fact that one of Uganda’s top students was a woman behind bars created considerable media attention.

That attracted the attention of a British lawyer, Alexander McLean, who had committed himself to improve conditions in Ugandan prisons. He convinced Susan to start studying law and he made it possible for her to start a correspondence study at the University of London in 2011. She was the only female prisoner in Uganda that participated in academic education, and soon found herself aiding other prisoners – as well as guards – with legal advice.

English lessons in Luzira Women’s Prison, 2013. (c) Jan Banning

On November 11, 2011, a few months before we would meet for the first time, Susan Kigula found herself in front of a judge once again. Her sentence was now reduced to twenty years. Her housekeeper, Patience, got sixteen years.

When I returned to the women’s prison in 2013, I found Susan with a stack of books at a table in a quiet corner. Her mood was great: her studies were going well, and in three years she expected to be released early thanks to her good behaviour. After that, she wanted to commit herself to improving human rights: ‘A lot of people end up in prison because they cannot pay a lawyer. I want to come out of here like an educated woman, so I will be able to fight for the rights of the underprivileged.’

On photo’s in the media can be seen that, for an interim undergraduate graduation ceremony, the prison organized a party – giant cake included – for her and two male prisoners. The three cut the cake together with beaming commissioner of prisons, Johnson Byabashija.

Undergraduate degree
On April 27, 2016, early in the morning, I found an email in my inbox: ” Hi, Jan, this is Susan Kigula. I am out of prison and I decided to contact you.”

On a rainy morning in January, after sixteen years in prison, a female guard had escorted her to the exit, sheltering her from the rain with an umbrella. A few months later she returned to Luzira prison – but only in order to receive her undergraduate degree, since one of her two fellow students was still in prison.
As part of the festivities, they organized a TEDx event with international speakers, and a big reception in Kampala’s Sheraton hotel.