Khushboo Damani, Research Scholar
ABSTRACT
It is a widely known fact, by now, that death sentences are to be awarded in the ‘rarest of rare’ cases. In India, case laws have established that while awarding such sentence the aggravating factors of the crime and the mitigating factors of the criminal have to be balanced so as to avoid taking away a human life in the absence of the gravest of situation. This balancing requires a humanist approach and hence many non-legal factors play a part in mitigation. While there are legal factors like inordinate delay, improper evidence, lack of intention, that are considered for mitigation, but the research is limited to the study of non-legal factors that provide a humanistic approach to the entire sentencing process of death penalty cases. Moreover, to understand the trend that is followed by courts for considering the various non-legal mitigating factors, the researcher has gone through all the cases on death sentence that the Supreme Court decided in the year 2019. The research work, through its course of study, aims to provide a detailed analysis of non- legal factors that work behind commutation of death sentences into other forms of punishment. These mitigating factors are not provided in a strait- jacket formula and hence, courts prefer the idea of individual sentencing in death penalty cases. Thus, the work shall provide an insight into feasibility of such sentencing policy that is followed in India.
