The moment Chaisiku Ngama Magoiga swung a hammer in self-defense and killed her husband, years of torture at his hands came to an end. But it brought another ordeal—a capital trial and a long wait on death row.
Anna Makame (a pseudonym), a destitute subsistence farmer with a history of domestic violence and mental illness—who, for days at a time, had no food to feed the family she was raising alone—sought to end the starvation by poisoning herself and her children. She faced a death sentence.
Both women are now free and living with their families, thanks largely to defense efforts by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and its alumni and human rights colleagues in Tanzania, where the women live.
Sandra Babcock, clinical professor of law and director of the center, noted that cases like these often involve women and transgender people with deeply traumatic backstories. “Their cases are different from men’s,” she said, “but nobody was really talking about them as a group, because there are very few of them compared to the number of men on death row.”
Magoiga’s case came to the center’s attention when Babcock learned of her brutal history of domestic violence from an associate in Tanzania. The court transcript revealed that her husband had repeatedly abused her and her children, a fact that was ignored during sentencing. “It was really an outrageous verdict and sentence. The judge chose not to believe her. It was so arbitrary,” Babcock said. This case reflected a global issue of courts failing to account for gender-based violence. The center hired a lawyer to file a supplemental brief, prepared by students, which led to the court overturning Magoiga’s conviction and ordering her release.
Makame’s crime was similarly rooted in her tragic life experiences. Abandoned as an infant, abused, and raising five children on her own, she was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder and major depressive disorder. After two months of drought killed their food supply, she mixed poison into her family’s food. Two of her children died.
Arrested and charged with murder, which carried a mandatory death sentence, Makame gave birth to her son alone in prison. With the help of the center, an appeal argued that Tanzania violated international human rights law by failing to provide for her as a pregnant, mentally ill mother. Prosecutors reduced her charges to manslaughter, and in December, the president of Tanzania commuted her sentence. Now, she lives with her mother and toddler son in a different village.
Launched in 2016, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide provides data and legal analysis on death penalty laws and practices around the world, on-the-ground advocacy, and education for lawyers, judges, and policymakers. Many of the lawyers who receive training through the center live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where resources are severely limited.
