how do i get utf-8 encoding for real?

[Skaperen]

i am running into these errors and wondering how i change the encoding to really get utf-8.

Output:
lt1/pdh /home/pdh 46> py2 new-sessionin.py foo -141
... local var: 'c' = '1'
... local var: 'n' = 141
... local var: 'data' = ['\x8d']
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "new-sessionin.py", line 476, in <module>
    result=main(sys.argv)
  File "new-sessionin.py", line 439, in main
    rr = decode_control( s[1:] )
  File "new-sessionin.py", line 330, in decode_control
    istr = [chr(x) for x in bytearray(istr,encoding='utf8')]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x8d in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
lt1/pdh /home/pdh 47> py3 new-sessionin.py foo -141
... local var: 'c' = '1'
... local var: 'n' = 141
... local var: 'data' = ['\x8d']
... local var: 'rr' = (0, '\xc2\x8d')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "new-sessionin.py", line 476, in <module>
    result=main(sys.argv)
  File "new-sessionin.py", line 467, in main
    r = execvp(c[0],c)
  File "/usr/local/bin/../../lib/python3.5/os.py", line 615, in execvp
    _execvpe(file, args)
  File "/usr/local/bin/../../lib/python3.5/os.py", line 650, in _execvpe
    exec_func(fullname, *argrest)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0-1: ordinal not in range(128)
lt1/pdh /home/pdh 48>