000{9$ I. THE PARTIES 1 Dexter Eddie Johnson (hereinafter referred to as "the Applicant"), is a dual national of the Republic of Ghana and Great Britain who was convicted and sentenced to death for murder and is currently on death row awaiting execution. 2 The Application is filed against the Republic of Ghana (hereinafter referred to as "the Respondent State"), which became a Party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (hereinafter referred to as "the Charter") on 1 June 1989 and to the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (hereinafter referred to as "the Protocol") on 16 August 2005. lt deposited, on 10 March 2011, a Declaration under Article 34(6) of the Protocol, through which it accepts the jurisdiction of the Court to receive cases from individuals and Non-Governmental Organisations. II. SUBJECT MATTER OF THE APPLICATION A. Facts of the matter 3 It emerges, from the Application, that on 27 May 2OO4, an American nationalwas killed near the village of Ningo in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. The Applicant was accused of committing this crime and brought to trial. He denied the offence. On 18 June 2008, the Fast Track High Court in Accra, convicted the Applicant of the murder and sentenced him to death. 4 The Applicant appealed his conviction and sentence before the Court of Appeal, arguing that while the death penalty per se is authorised by Article 13(1) of the Constitution of Ghana, the mandatory imposition of the death sentence, on which the Constitution was silent, was unconstitutional. To buttress this assertion, the Applicant argued that the mandatory death penalty violates the right not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishmenl, the right not to be ( ,