Death
penalty contradicts the core objectives of the criminal justice system.
The core principles of criminal justice system is to deliver justice for
all by convicting and punishing the guilty for his/her offences and helping
them stop offending while protecting the innocent. In other words the central
purpose of criminal justice system is to deliver efficient, effective and fair
justice to the general public. The whole idea of justice is not to punish a
person but to provide him sufficient time to reinvent himself and live the rest
of his life by positively contributing to the society. Thus, judiciary or
justice systems around the world are meant to make people a civilized way of
living.
The debate of over death penalty in India are
decades old. As per the Indian penal
code act 1860 only two crimes are to be given Death penalty viz for murder (
Sec. 302) and waging war against the state. Hence the justice system in India
allows for death sentence for crimes committed under these two categories. The
supreme court of India has time and against validated the relevance and
importance of death penalty with some checks and balances.
But the real question here is whether this
barbaric act adheres to the norms of a civilized and progressive society? The
answer will be a big “NO”. There is no place for barbarism in modern civilized
society. The famous Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria in his paper “An essay on crimes and
punishment” has made some sparkling points with regards to death penalty. He
coined two important concepts on this. One the objective of the death penalty is
to deter future commission of crimes and to reform the offender. The first among
these objectives has not achieved as of now and the latter is not achievable at
all.
The greater question here is whether
there is any of empirical evidence to suggest or/ rather prove the mandate for
death penalty? As of now, there is no proven evidence to suggest that Death penalty
can be an effective deterrent in curbing/reducing any of the crimes anywhere in
the world. Statistics do suggest that the crime rates
in states where there are no death penalties is lower than that of those having
it though on a smaller margin.
It has been shown that in USA
where the level of crimes is lower in states where the capital punishment is
not a mode of punishment. If we take the case of India where we have capital punishments
since our independence suggest the same thing. The crimes rates never reduced
in our country. It shows a level of increasing trend in the last two decades
especially the number of heinous crimes are on all time high recently.
The SC, in the Bactchan Singh VS State
of Punjab, has made some check and balances by bringing the concept of “Rarest
of the Rare” while awarding capital punishment. But, the SC has not proscribed
what should be and what ought to be the “Rarest of Rare cases”. It simply left
it to the wisdom of judges .In such cases, we can say that that judgment will
subject to the benches which the case goes for hearing. This leaves the chances
for subjective and prejudiced judgments which are clearly against the principle
of equality which is enshrined in our constitution.
The other issue includes the delay in justice
delivery system. As told by Krishna Ayer “Justice delayed is justice denied”.
More than a dozen cases mercy petitions are pending before the president. And
also there are lots of cases pending before various judges awaiting judgments. In
the recent past the case of Perarivalan and 2 others where the clemency
petition was dishonored by the president after 11 years. Isn’t a humanitarian
approach where these convicts have to undergo mental trauma for the past 11
years? Not only them but their family too underwent the same level of agony in
all these time.
The other issue is related to error in
the pronouncement of capital punishment by the higher judiciary. As mentioned earlier SC ‘s in the 1983 case
where it brought the concept of Rarest
of the rare concept has much flaws than merits. In 2012 justice S.B. Sinha and
Cyriac joseph retired SC judges has said that there were errors in the
judgments of theirs in awarding death sentence to 13 people. Out of the 13
convicts, 2 were already hanged in the due course. They have asked president to
look into the matter at the earliest so that any more error may not be
committed. It implies the concept of irrecoverability.
Once a life is taken away it
is taken away forever and nobody can give back at any time. And if such open
admissions of judges continue abated automatically this will lead to a
situation where people will take law in their hands an of our democracy.
Nobody in this world is a born criminal.
It is the circumstances and the society makes them so. So nobody can ever escape
from by simply blaming the criminals. The greater question here is about how to
transform the society to be more civilized and and pragmatic???
As rightly pointed out by great father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi “An eye for an eye makes the whole world
blind”.
NAME : SANDEEP.A
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