Editorial: An eye for an eye

The number is said to be the highest since 2004, when as many as 563 convicts were placed on death row.

The report was put together by an advocacy group dealing with criminal law reforms called Project 39A, which is based out of the National Law University, New Delhi. The group’s study highlighted that the number of convicts facing the death penalty surged in the aftermath of trial courts handing down more sentences (144) in 2021 as compared to the pre-pandemic period of 2020 (77) and 2019 (104). There were also a fewer number of appeals being pronounced by the higher courts, owing to their reduced functioning during the lockdowns in the pandemic.

And although, 144 death sentences were handed down by the trial courts, the high courts could entertain only about 39 cases, and of this, only four resulted in the confirmation of capital punishment. It is worth noting that of all cases that resulted in a death sentence, sexual offences made up 54% of them, an indicator of how courts are now leaning towards the harshest punishment for sexual misdemeanours. Tamil Nadu has the distinction of being the State where the second largest number of death sentences were handed out (15), preceded by UP and Bihar with 27 sentences each and followed by Andhra Pradesh and Odisha at 13, and 9 sentences respectively.

The death penalty, which is usually handed out by the courts in the rarest of rare cases, is a controversial subject in India. The country has executed as many as 752 convicts since Independence. Those in favour of death penalty have often referred to the punishment as a strong deterrent to sexual violence against women. However, global statistics have not been conclusively able to establish that carrying out more capital punishments had led to a significant dip in sexual crimes against women.

These judgments have often come under scrutiny from human rights activists who argue that not only does capital punishment bring the judiciary down to the level of the common criminal or the mob on the street, that is driven by vendetta, but it also is an irreversible action, that could end up sending an innocent to the gallows. The argument is not without its proof as way back in 2009, the Supreme Court admitted that it had erroneously sentenced 15 people to capital punishment over a period of 15 years. Since the year 2000, the apex court had ordered 60 death sentences, which essentially puts the margin of error at 25%, i.e. one in every four persons was wrongly convicted to be hanged till death.

According to some critics of the penalty, the fact that a crime like rape could be punishable by death puts the victims at further risk of endangerment as the perpetrators might be inclined to commit murder or inflict grievous injuries on the victim in order to escape identification or persecution. One of the most salient arguments presented against the enforcement of the capital punishment for sexual crimes has to do with how such judgments narrow down the focus of the crime on individuals, and not society as a whole. According to Amnesty International, there are 106 nations where the use of death penalty is not permitted by law. Maybe they know something we don’t – an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.