Life Vs Capital Sentence?

April 15, 2023

If, through death penalty, we can create fears, though it's against my will, we have to do it. You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty. I believe life imprisonment is far worse than the death penalty. Our criminal justice system is fallible.” --- BrainyQuote

Life sentence Vs Death sentence has been a perennial subject of debate over decades and centuries. The subject has again come into focus following a recent Supreme Court comments on the subject which is well articulated by Dhananjay Mahapatra and published in The Times of India on14/4/23 - and excerpted below.

Delay in deciding mercy petitions frustrates death penalty: SC

The Supreme Court on 14/4/23 said prisoners on death row were taking advantage of inordinate delays in deciding mercy petitions to seek commutation of their punishment to life sentence, thereby defeating the purpose of death sentence.

This ruling from a bench of Justices M R Shah and C T Ravikumar came on a petition filed by Maharashtra government challenging the Bombay HC's decision to commute to life sentence the capital punishment awarded to one Renuka and her sister Seema, who between 1990 and 1996 had kidnapped 13 children and killed nine of them in Kolhapur. The death sentence awarded to them by a Kolhapur court in 2001 was upheld by the HC in 2004 and their appeal was dismissed by the SC in 2006.

Their mercy pleas were rejected by the governor in 2013 and the President in 2014. The delay of over seven years in deciding their mercy pleas was taken as a valid ground by the HC, relying on several judgments of the SC, including the one relating to convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment.

Appearing for the Centre, additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati said considering the gravity of the offence committed by the convicts the HC should have passed an order directing imprisonment for rest of their natural life without any remission.

"If such an order had been passed, it would have been in the fitness of things," she said.

Accepting her argument, the bench said the convicts would spend the rest of their lives behind bars without grant of remission, but disapproved the inordinate delay on part of the President and governors, which in turn is taken advantage of by death row prisoners.

The convicts were to be executed on August 19, 2014, the day they moved the HC.

The HC commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment relying on the 2014 judgment in Shatrughan Chauhan case, in which the SC had said, "We hold that undue long delay in execution of sentence of death will entitle the condemned prisoner to approach this court under Article 32. However, this court will only examine the circumstances surrounding the delay and those that have ensued after the sentence was confirmed by the judicial process.

This court cannot reopen the conclusion already reached but may consider the question of inordinate delay to decide whether the execution of sentence should be carried out or should be altered into imprisonment for life".

The subject is open to many views. What are yours? Your response is welcome in the format given below (Pl scroll down a bit). Again, welcome to reason.

 

  

Also read:
 

 

 

 

By John B Monteiro
To submit your article / poem / short story to Daijiworld, please email it to news@daijiworld.com mentioning 'Article/poem submission for daijiworld' in the subject line. Please note the following:

  • The article / poem / short story should be original and previously unpublished in other websites except in the personal blog of the author. We will cross-check the originality of the article, and if found to be copied from another source in whole or in parts without appropriate acknowledgment, the submission will be rejected.
  • The author of the poem / article / short story should include a brief self-introduction limited to 500 characters and his/her recent picture (optional). Pictures relevant to the article may also be sent (optional), provided they are not bound by copyright. Travelogues should be sent along with relevant pictures not sourced from the Internet. Travelogues without relevant pictures will be rejected.
  • In case of a short story / article, the write-up should be at least one-and-a-half pages in word document in Times New Roman font 12 (or, about 700-800 words). Contributors are requested to keep their write-ups limited to a maximum of four pages. Longer write-ups may be sent in parts to publish in installments. Each installment should be sent within a week of the previous installment. A single poem sent for publication should be at least 3/4th of a page in length. Multiple short poems may be submitted for single publication.
  • All submissions should be in Microsoft Word format or text file. Pictures should not be larger than 1000 pixels in width, and of good resolution. Pictures should be attached separately in the mail and may be numbered if the author wants them to be placed in order.
  • Submission of the article / poem / short story does not automatically entail that it would be published. Daijiworld editors will examine each submission and decide on its acceptance/rejection purely based on merit.
  • Daijiworld reserves the right to edit the submission if necessary for grammar and spelling, without compromising on the author's tone and message.
  • Daijiworld reserves the right to reject submissions without prior notice. Mails/calls on the status of the submission will not be entertained. Contributors are requested to be patient.
  • The article / poem / short story should not be targeted directly or indirectly at any individual/group/community. Daijiworld will not assume responsibility for factual errors in the submission.
  • Once accepted, the article / poem / short story will be published as and when we have space. Publication may take up to four weeks from the date of submission of the write-up, depending on the number of submissions we receive. No author will be published twice in succession or twice within a fortnight.
  • Time-bound articles (example, on Mother's Day) should be sent at least a week in advance. Please specify the occasion as well as the date on which you would like it published while sending the write-up.

Comment on this article

  • k b r, Mangala Uru

    Sat, Apr 15 2023

    capital sentence means one time expense and headache is gone for good... life sentence is recurring expense and the headache might still recur....


Leave a Comment

Title: Life Vs Capital Sentence?



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.