Boko has always promised that when the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) takes over the government they will use a human rights-centred approach. Furthermore, he promised to abolish the death penalty and his argument has always been that capital punishment doesn't serve as a deterrent to the rise in murder cases in Botswana. His challenge is that there is a general consensus that the death penalty should continue as reflected in the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Review of the Constitution of Botswana, commissioned by former president Mokgweetsi Masisi. Recommendations made through the Commission suggested that the death penalty must continue. Nonetheless, Ditshwanelo, a human rights group has over the years called for the abolition of the death penalty.
Death penalty in most cases has been imposed upon the conviction for murder without extenuating circumstances and is often carried out by hanging. Over the years Boko, who is also a human rights lawyer, has been pushing to abolish the death penalty in Botswana's legal system. When opposing the death penalty in the courts, he didn't hesitate to stand firmly against it whilst representing Brandon Sampson in 2008, a Motswana sentenced to death together with his South African counterpart Michael Molefhe, after they killed two Zimbabwean men. Boko said he was embarking on a campaign that might lead to the abolition of the death penalty and at the time he was ready to fight the matter in courts. In 2009, he also told a panel discussion at the University of Botswana (UB) that Jesus would have lived longer if there had been no death penalty. "If we didn't have the death penalty, Jesus would have lived much longer than the 33 years that he did," he said at the discussion whose topic was 'To Kill Or Not To Kill – Capital Punishment In Botswana'. He explained that the African Charter on Human Rights declares human life sacrosanct.
Boko said Botswana's justice system is, therefore, undermining human rights because it has capital punishment. The President faulted a statement by fellow panellist Pastor Owen Isaacs that governments are agents of God. He said the statement is startling because the same agents of God create an orgy of pain and cruelty when they perform executions. In an interview, Ditshwanelo founder and director Alice Mogwe said they didn't touch on the issue of the death penalty but said they were looking forward to engaging Boko on human rights issues. Ditshwanelo has in the past expressed concern and remains opposed to and condemned the use of the death penalty as a means of punishment. The human rights body continues to call on government to address the greater challenge of societal degeneration. "Look for alternatives to addressing the cause of increasing anti-social behaviour which may result in the committing of capital offences including the increasing cases of gender-based violence," they wrote in a previous statement.
On the other hand, according to other recommendations made by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Constitutional Review, Batswana want the death sentence to also be applied to drug dealers and child rapists in addition to murderers. Currently, there are a number of murder convicts on death row and it remains to be seen if Boko would authorise their executions. One of the death row inmates is a double murder convict, Gobuamang Ntsuape, who has also been sentenced to two life terms for the murder of a police officer and prison inmate. Ntsuape, who is facing death by hanging for the previous murder of his ex-girlfriend's mother, was sentenced by Justice Barnabas Nyamadzabo of the Gaborone High Court. Furthermore, another death row inmate Atlholang Mojanki is waiting to be hanged. Mojanki was convicted of brutally killing his ex-girlfriend, Bokani Socks back in 2014 in Francistown. Justice Lot Moroka of the Francistown High Court sentenced Mojanki, a former Botswana Police Service (BPS) officer, to death in 2021 for murdering Socks, a former nurse at the Nyangabgwe Referral Hospital.
