An Inner Conflict In Judicial Discretion To Capital Punishment And Criticism Towards Its Abolishment
Dewang Mehta, LL.M., Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
ABSTRACT
The degree of punishment is decided on the degree of culpability of the criminal act and how far the society was shaken to experience such act. The punishment of these heinous crimes should be punished in such a way that will be a deterrent to the society and which would create a sense of respect towards the law of the land. The reformative justice system does not work efficiently in these extreme criminal acts and the need of the extreme punishment is warranted. Death penalty has been an instrument of retributive justice since a long time back, but the continuing criminal act has caused the scholars and legislators to believe that this form of punishment has failed.
The present trend, however, is to keep the number of offences punishable by death to a minimum and avoid death penalty as far as possible but its retention in the statute book is favoured even to this day.
The present research paper will examine the judicial inner conflict regarding the award of capital punishment; reasons for lesser punishment; and special reasons for extreme one as per provision 354(3) CrPC (now 393(3) BNSS) procedural law and also the law commissions report on the abolishment of death penalty for all offences except “terrorism”.
Keywords: Capital punishment, Abolishment, Retention, Judicial discretion, Murder.
