The Social & Economic Bias Intrinsic To The Death Penalty: A Legal Analysis From An Egalitarian Point Of View
- IJLLR Journal
- Dec 17, 2024
- 2 min read
Siddhanth Durgesh Nadkarni, National Law Institute University (NLIU), Bhopal
ABSTRACT
It is a fact that there has been an arduous attempt of us humans to restrict and minimize deviation from and promote adherence to behaviors considered as normal and acceptable by our culture over eons and centuries. Numerous methods have been employed to achieve this end. Many renowned sociologists, criminologists, legal professionals and jurists have, during their careers, thoroughly studied the myriad aspects of crimes and the penal systems put in place to deal with them. Capital punishment has been seen as one of the most contentious of these penalties.1 Nonetheless, the death penalty has atleast by far, not been called out as unlawful in India, among some other nations like the United States of America. It is a procedure established by law, by means of which an individual is deprived of his life by the state as retribution for committing an exceptionally heinous offence. India has by far continued with the death penalty to punish offenders that have been found guilty of committing a severe crime from among a set of them.2 Even though the SC has permitted the capital punishment to be awarded only in some specific cases since the mid-1990s which were deemed by the court to be the “rarest of the rare” and that caused tremors in the conscience of the citizens of the nation. Following this, the Court has persistently upheld the constitutional validity of the capital punishment as awarded upon applying the “rarest of the rare cases” rule, which tempers hearings in the court with a firm presumption in favor of the right to life, acknowledging that the most extreme of penalties, the capital punishment must be awarded only in extraordinary cases. For the reason that the definition of capital punishment has not been further elaborated upon and no well elucidated guiding rules have been formulated, each judge must ascertain whether or not to award the capital punishment. That being said, scholars of jurisprudence are unambiguous in their stand that the “rarest of the rare” does not in any way connote the uncommonness of the crime as the test; judges are required to initially ascertain the exacerbating factors (pertaining to the crime) and then balance them out with allaying factors (pertaining to the circumstances in which the accused found themselves in). Additionally, judges are required to liberally and expansively interpret these allaying factors, without harboring the prejudiced notion that the accused is beyond reformation.
