Abstract
In every legal system of the present world, unlawful acts attract some form of punishment. Punishments have two main purposes: one being that there must be a penalty for every act by a wrongdoer committed in contravention of the law in force, and the other being to discourage and deter others from committing the same wrong. Capital punishment is one such form of punishment of the highest level.
Capital punishment, also called ‘death penalty’, is the term given to the legal killing of a wrongdoer, ordered by the Court, as punishment for his crime(s).[1]It’s important to take a look at how capital punishment has evolved over the centuries, the various laws presently awarding capital punishment, and to address whether capital punishment is really necessary. The United Nations has itself affirmed that capital punishment undermines human dignity and has called for a moratorium on the same.[2]
In this paper, the authors have stood for the abolishment of capital punishment and for this, they have taken up the various arguments used to defend the practice and analysed their standing to conclusively state that the capital punishment as a form of penalty is extreme, often practised undignifiedly and is unnecessary in a contemporary modern world.
Keywords: Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Abolishment of Death Penalty
(I) A Global Background of Capital Punishment
Some of the major questions arising in the mind of modern penologists are whether capital punishment or death penalty should be abolished or not. There are several states who are more inclined towards abolishing capital punishment while others prefer not to. Forexample, States like India, China and the United States of America prefer dealing the death penalty for certain crimes committed while States such as the United Kingdom and Canada have abolished it altogether.
Before dealing with the topic, it would be pertinent to explain the concept of Punishment. Punishment depends on the crime committed and the reason behind punishing the offender is to stop him and to deter members of the society from committing the same offence. Earlier, States aimed to make as frightening a punishment as possible. Thus, in ancient times, the punishment for the most heinous crime was usually capital punishment. The various forms in which Capital punishment was inflicted included boiling, strangling, flaying etc… However, these methods are not practiced anymore. Presently, nations aim to restrict death sentence to least numbers of offences.
Currently, 55 of the 196 nations in the United Nations Organisation practice capital punishment as a form of punishment to the offenders. A 105 nations of the remaining 141 have abolished capital punishment completely.[3]
(I) (i) Ancient & Medieval Legal History of Inflicting Capital Punishment
The history of States enacting capital punishment goes back thousands of years to the Babylonian Empire in 1800 BCE.[4]Throughout history, capital punishment has been inflicted in various forms including but not limited to beheading, flaying, burning, throwing down steep rocky cliffs, crushing the head by an elephant, drowning, hanging, crucifixion, blowing from a canon, stoning, etc….[5]
The Hammurabi Code of the Babylonian Empire in 1800 BCE prescribed capital punishment for about 20 different crimes including theft and perjury. Ancient Greece employed Draco’s law of death penalty for all crimes, thus also giving literature the word ‘Draconian’ meaning extremely harsh.[6]
During the Medieval period, public execution was considered as an accepted form of punishment in Europe, with beheading being the most common and replaced by hanging by the 10th Century AD.[7],[8]
(I) (ii) Modern Legal History of Inflicting Capital Punishment
Modern legal history of death penalty laws can be traced back to Britain. England, in 1668, had about 50 offences for which the punishment was death.[9]By the start of the 18th Century, this number rose to222 crimes and included crimes like making counterfeit stamps, felling of trees, stealing, robbing, etc.[10]
From the 18th Century, however, the trend in England was to avoid the death penalty and juries preferred to award transportation to American colonies. This was helped by the Transportation Act, 1717 which regulated the system of transporting criminals to work in American colonies with a term of indentured servitude.
The Judgement of Death Act, 1823 followed this trend of avoiding awarding capital punishment and made it discretionary for all crimes save for murder and treason. By 1861, the number of crimes punishable with death were brought down to just 5 and included treason, espionage, murder, piracy and arson in royal dockyards. Later, in 1868, public executions came to be banned.[11]
Throughout the 18th and the 19th Century, various European nations started abolishing capital punishment for various offences. In Britain, it wasn’t until 1965 when the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, 1965 was passed that death penalty for the crime of murder came to be replaced with a sentence of life imprisonment. By 1998, death penalty was completely abolished in the United Kingdom.
(I) (iii) The Legislations of Capital Punishment in India
India has, since the ancient times, had in its laws punishment by death. One of the more bizarre forms of capital punishment included being crushed by an elephant and was known as ‘gungarao’.[12]The Manusmriti prescribed death penalty for murders so as to refrain people from committing the act and to prevent a state of anarchy. During the Mughal period, offenders were dressed in buffalo skin and made to stand in the sun; the shrinking hide eventually led to the death of the offender who died in great agony. All these practices were stopped under the British legal administration with hanging being the only form of inflicting capital punishment.[13]
The Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860 prescribed death as the punishment for various crimes during the colonial era. It wasn’t until 1931 that the issue of capital punishment was raised in the Legislative Assembly. This was done by Shri Gaya Prasad Singh, who wished to abolish the death penalty for offences under the IPC. However, his motion was never passed.
The Constituent Assembly Debates dealt with the question of capital punishment by questioning its judge-centric nature, the effect of the punishment among the families of the poor, the possibility of error and its arbitrariness. Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava commented during the debates on capital punishment about the possibility of error where he stated that a person doesn’t usually get justice in the courts and gave examples of cases of riots where it is often difficult to hold specific people liable. According to him, all person sentenced to death should get to be able to appeal the sentence as a matter of right.[14]
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Draft Committee of the Constituent Assembly, favoured abolishing the Capital Punishment. He said that to end this controversy it’s important to abolish death sentence and also stated about the principle of non- violence which has been followed by the nation for so long.[15]
After independence, capital punishment was sustained for various crimes under the Includer the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) of 1898, courts were required to state reasons in their judgements if they provided a punishment other than capital punishment for offences where capital punishment was an option under Section 367(5).[16] The said section was repealed by the Parliament in 1955.[17]The 1955 Amendment Act also amended the IPC by substituting the punishment of “transportation for life” with “imprisonment for life”.[18] This amendment was important as it signalled that capital punishment was not the norm.
The re-enacted CrPC, 1973 brought another reform in the death penalty laws. Under the amended Section 354(3), the Courts now had to state special reasons for awarding a sentence of death.[19]There has, thus, been a change in the attitude towards inflicting death penalty. The judgements of the courts of India give us an insight into the direction which India is taking regardingits death penalty laws.
(I) (iv) What gave sanction to the Death Penalty
If we take a closer look at history, we can see that what enabled capital punishment to become popular as a means of punishing the offender are the various theories of punishment. These theories directly reflect the thought processes behind supporting a punishment as harsh as the death penalty. These are:
- Deterrence Theory –
This theory aimed to deter or prevent a person from doing a crime or repeating it in the future. To enable this deterrence, harsh punishments are imposed by law so that a lesson or message can be sent to other members of society regarding the consequence of committing the same crime.
The deterrence theory has two components: (a) punishment is awarded to the offender to prevent him/her from repeating the offence, and (b) presuming that other people would not commit the same crime due to the fear of the punishment that would be awarded.
The deterrence theory kept a check on numerous crimes in the ancient and medieval period and is still popular today. Deterrence has been taken as one of the most common rationale expressed for capital punishment. Specific Deterrence is a kind of deterrence which aims to stop convicted offenders from committing a crime again. Invoking the death penalty serves as specific deterrence as the executed offender will not be able to harm society again.[20]
However, the most common reason for the theory to prevail is the assumption of the people’s fear of death more than the fear of being imprisoned. For this theory to work, it has to believe that nothing can be more sacred to a person than that person’s life. It believes that while a person would be willing to accept a lesser form of penalty for a crime, he would not be willing to lose his life as penalty for the crime committed.[21]
- Retributive Theory –
The basis of this theory is the principle of “lex talionis” which is Latin for the principle of “an eye for an eye”. Retribution means inflicting punishment on a person as means of vengeance for committing a wrongful act. Thus, the objective of this theory is to take revenge and not reform the criminals.
The idea behind this theory dates back to the earliest civilizations of human history with the Hammurabi Code of the Babylonian Empire stating that if man breaks the bone of another, his bones shall also be broken.
Under this theory, there is a sense of moral responsibility. Thus, for example, if a person steals, he or she is morally responsible for stealing and because of this moral responsibility, he or she deserves punishment. Retributivists believe in the punishment being proportional to the offence.
However, applying this theory strictly leads to counter-intuitive complications. For example, it leads to the judgement that robbers should be robbed, arsonists should have their own houses burned down and that rapists should be raped. Another problem arises when strictly applying this principle is the inadequacy which this theory may be criticised for. For example, if one man kills tens of people, killing that one man could not be considered as sufficient under this theory when compared to the lives of the many that are lost.
- Preventive Theory –
The aim of this theory is to prevent the crime itself. It does this by keeping the criminal away from the society to prevent future crimes. Death penalty and life imprisonment are justified under this theory since they intend to keep the offender from entering the society again.
Prevention has always been the principle aim of punishment. Even if the punishment intends to inflict pain or loss on the offender, it would almost always aim to send a message to society about not repeating the same offence and the consequences which repeating it would entail.
With the death penalty, the criminal is permanently disabled from committing any other crime. There is an assurance that the offender will not be able to harm society again.
(II) The Indian Courts’ Changing Attitude on Death Penalty
In 1973, the case of Jagmohan Singh v. State of U. P.[22]was the first in several to challenge the death penalty laws in India. It was argued that the death penalty violated Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. It was also argued that the courts had unguided discretion in awarding the death penalty. What is interesting is that a decision of the US Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia[23],was also cited by the Petitioners.
The case of Furman[24]was a 1972 case in the US Supreme Court wherein the Court struck down all the schemes imposing capital punishment by holding that the death penalty was the constitution of a cruel punishment and violated the Constitution. However, this was merely a moratorium which lasted until 1976 when another judgement of the US Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia[25] reversed the earlier decision of the court and held that the imposition of the death penalty does not automatically violate the Eighth and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, as was previously held in Furman’s case.
In Jagmohan[26], rather than following the principles of the Furman case which came before it, the Supreme Court held the death penalty as a permissible punishment which didn’t violate the Constitution. The Court also said that the judges are given wide discretion in fixing the degree of a punishment due to the futility of laying down specific standards in criminal law. However, it should be kept in mind that this case came before the re-enacted CrPC, 1973 which made granting the death penalty an exception.
The question of what are “special reasons” for the passing of a sentence of death under Section 354(3) of the CrPC, 1973 arose in the case of Rajendra Prasad v. State of Uttar Pradesh[27]. The Court held that the special reasons under Section 354(3) relate to the criminal and not to the crime itself. It also said that the retributive theory is no longer valid and that deterrence makes deprivation of life practicable. The case of Dalbir Singh v. State of Punjab[28] relied on Rajendra Prasad’s decision to confirm a death penalty to two people who brutally shot and murdered three people.
However, in the same year in 1979, another bench of the SC noted the Rajendra Prasad case to be contrary to the Jagmohan case inBachan Singh v. State of Punjab[29]. This case was then referred to a Constitutional Bench which culminated in the landmark 1980 case of the same name (Bachan Singh).
In this case, the death penalty was challenged as being inhuman, cruel and degrading. It was argued that the main objective of giving a punishment is to reform and rehabilitation and not retribution. It was also argued that the purpose for which the death penalty was enforced, that of deterrence, had not been proven to be effective.
Out of the five judges in the case, four held the death penalty to be constitutional. The court said that the reasons for implicating a criminal to the death sentence should include both the circumstances of the crime and the criminalthus overrulingthe Rajendra Prasad caseand affirming the Jagmohan case.
This case has been considered a landmark as the Court for the first time clarified and laid down the principle that the death sentence should only be awarded in the “rarest of rare” cases. It is quoted as saying:
“A real and abiding concern for the dignity of human life postulates resistance to taking a life through law’s instrumentality. That ought not to be done save in the rarest of rare cases when the alternative option is unquestionably foreclosed.”[30] (emphasis applied)
Prior to 1983, mandatory death sentences were awarded for certain crimes. The case of Mithu v. State of Punjab[31] held that mandatory death sentence is unconstitutional since it does not take into account the various circumstances of each case. By making the sentence mandatory for a class of persons, the Court said, the law effectively deprives the said class of their opportunity to be heard and neither is the court then obligated to perform its duty under Section 354(3) to record special reasons before executing a sentence of death.
In the case of Deena v. Union of India,[32] the constitutionality of the death penalty was challenged but the court rather than delving into this question the court instead went into the question of whether execution by hanging was constitutionally valid. Holding that hanging does not involve humiliation, barbarity, or torture, the court rejected the constitutional challenge to the method of hanging.
In T.V.Vatheeswaran v. State of Tamil Nadu,[33] it was held by the Supreme Court that delaying the sentence of death by more than two years results in the violation of Article 21. However, the court also held in Sher Singh v. State of Punjab,[34] that a delay in enforcing the sentence of death was not entitle or convict to quash the sentence of death.
The 35th Report of the Law Commission in 1967 recommended that capital punishment be retained as it said that India could not risk experimenting with abolishing the death penalty.[35] This report was cited in Bachan Singh and the case of Shashi Nayar v. Union of India[36]sought to challenge Bachan Singh for placing reliance on a report from 1967, arguing for the abolishment of death penalty. However, the SC at the time refused to hear further on the issue due to the unstable law and order situation within the nation in 1991. Thus, the issue remained at bay for some more time and subsequent cases followed the ratio in Bachan Singh.
Under the IPC, death penalty is awarded for 12 different offences from treason to perjury causing death of an innocent. Section 364A states that any person who kidnaps or abducts another for ransom from the Government shall be punished with the death penalty. The case of Vikram Singh v. Union of India[37] was faced with the question that Section 364A is unconstitutional, since Section 364A awards death penalty for a non-homicidal crime which shouldn’t warrant such an extreme punishment. The SC, however, denied the Petitioner’s arguments and, upholding Section 364A, said that the death penalty is only awarded in the rarest of rare cases.
(III) The Necessity of the Capital Punishment – A Critical Analysis
The death penalty has been in practice for several years now and many of the societies around the world adopted it as to create a deterrent effect in the mind of people. The sole purpose of death penalty was to create fear in the mind of people and at the same time to eliminate the crime. There are several countries which practiced death penalty for a long period of time but eventually abolished it. The countries which had abolished capital punishment are Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Netherlands, Denmark, Nepal, South Africa and some Latin American States and also reported that there were no ill-effects of abolition.[38]
In the modern reformative era, the retributive principle of ‘tit for tat’ does not serve any purpose in fact it somehow promotes people to take revenge and which leads to crime happening on the daily basis. For instance, property which belongs to father but after his death two brother fight for it due to unequal distribution of the property and the desperation for the property even lead them to process thoughts like killing each other which will eventually turns into murder. Therefore, retribution can only cause more harm rather than serving good to the society.[39]
In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, an Italian criminologist, published a treatise titled “On Crimes and Punishments” in which there were the first modern arguments arguing why the death penalty is not good in law. He protested against the use of torturous and barbarous methods of execution. He also highlighted about the need of individualized treatment. He further expressed his views with regard to the capital punishment as he says that death penalty shows how insignificant human life is and how cruel man really is with regards to human life. During the same period, mens rea was provided with high importance and in determining the guilt and punishment of the offender but in some of the cases it’s difficult to determine the guilt of the offender.[40]
Internationally, there have been treaties supporting the right to life over the death penalty. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’) is an International Human Rights Treaties which does not completely abolish the death sentence, but the same guarantees right to life under Article 6 of the Covenant. The Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR is the only treaty which focuses on the abolition of death penalty.
The Convention against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment does not consider imposing death penalty as a form of cruelty. India has ratified the ICCPR and is signatory to the Torture Convention but has not ratified it.
The death penalty has been enforced in India even before independence and continued even after India was free of the colonial rule. Below are some of the common arguments supporting death penalty and my analysis on why the same don’t have legs to stand.
(i) Capital Punishment functions as a deterrent to future crimes of the same nature –
While the main argument for retaining capital punishment has always been that it serves as a deterrent to the people from committing the same crimes, statistics show otherwise. Crimes which entail the death penalty such as rape and murder have been on the rise ever since 1953.[41]From 2001 to 2012, the number of rape cases in India rose from about 20,000 to 30,000.[42]Canada, for example, abolished the death penalty in 2003 and contrary to the basis of this argument, the number of offences relating to culpable homicide have fallen by a large margin of 44 percent.[43]
(ii) A person who kills another does not deserve to live himself –
This argument is based on the age-old maxim of “an eye for an eye” where the punishment for causing harm and consequently the death of one person deserves to be the death of the offender. Many relatives and close friends of the victims of the crime prefer capital punishment since they feel it does justice to the victim.
However, saying that a man who kills loses his right to live and that killing him would do justice to the victim is not right. The purpose of the law is not, and should not be, to provide retributive justice or promote the furtherance of personal vendetta but to protect the people from such offences. This can be done without the death penalty by enforcing a sentence for life on the offender and by enforcing the laws more strictly and diligently. Once an offender is caught, he is put imprisoned. This achieves the same objective which the death penalty seeks to accomplish – that of keeping the society away from harm’s way of such offenders.
(iii) The majority supports the death penalty and hence India, being a democracy, should not abolish the death penalty –
This argument presupposes the fact that the views of the majority are inherently correct. However, history teaches us that the majority has not always been right in its judgement. Yet, we see this tendency of the people to call for death penalty for offenders in cases of rape such as the Kathua rape case or the Nirbhaya rape. The orders for the hanging of the Nirbhaya rapists passed by the Delhi Court also shows how the courts in India also tend to agree with the voice of the majority, especially in matters of such emotional value as rape.[44]If India is to become a progressive nation, it has to progress not just in its economy but also its laws. This requires a change in the mental attitude of the masses.
(iv) The death penalty is better than imposing life imprisonment since the offender does not have to suffer for as long a period of time –
This argument also presupposes another fact – that offenders who are awarded the death penalty are hanged within a short period of the award being passed. However, this is not the case. According to Section 366 (1) of the CrPC, 1973, it is only after the High Court has confirmed the sentence of death passed by the Court of Session that the penalty can be carried out.[45] Further, after confirmation, the convict is allowed to make, in certain cases, an appeal to the Supreme Court under Article 132 or Article 136. Even after such an appeal has been rejected by the Court, the convict can file a mercy petition with either the Governor (under Article 161) or the President (under Article 72).
All of these processes take time and the convict is kept in jail where he waits for the result of his appeals. Where the death sentence is confirmed, even then the convict has to wait for years before he is finally executed by the State. According to the Death Penalty India Report published by the National Law University of Delhi, most convicts are economically vulnerable prisoners (about 74%) and hence access to legal representation is often delayed to them.[46]
(IV) Suggested Measures and Concluding Statements
Several judges, both from India and outside, have condemned the death penalty and termed it as a failed experiment.[47]Justice Bhagwati and Justice Krishna Iyer have time and again rose up against the death penalty in their judgement while the ex-Chief Justice of India, Y. V. Chandrachud, who formed a part of the majority bench in Bachan Singh’s case, altered his views on the death penalty after his retirement and remarked that it both fails to deter criminals and insert fear into the minds of the criminals from committing a crime punished with death.[48]
When abolishing the death penalty, often the question that is asked is whether the move will help in reducing crime. As seen in Canada’s example above, abolishing the death penalty and the lowering rate of crime are directly proportional.[49] However, there are several factors other factors at play such as increasing the living standards of the people, enforcing the law more diligently and promoting awareness of the law, rather than the fear of it, among the masses.
Countries like Denmark, Sweden and Holland keep people convicted of the death penalty in a special institution which is partly a prison and partly a hospital.[50]Four-fifths of the fifty-five African nations have had either capital punishment abolished or have been practicing moratoriums since the past few years.
However, abolishment of capital punishment cannot come in one go. Laws relating to capital punishment have to constantly evolve and change over time in a way so as to become more and more harder for the Courts to enforce the capital punishment.[51] Section 354 (3) was a step towards this way and the Apex Court’s decision in Bachan Singh is a positive step since it limits awarding the death penalty only in the rarest of rare cases, further limiting the power of the Courts to grant the death penalty.
In 2015, the Law Commission had also recommended for the abolishment of capital punishment.[52]This is significant as the Law Commission in its 39th Report in July 1968 had earlier recommended retaining the capital punishment for India. The 2015 Report truly shows a turnaround in the attitude of the Indian legal experts regarding the law of capital punishment.
We can all learn from the European Union in the way it deals with nations still retaining the death penalty as a way of reminding them that the death penalty is a practice which has reached its time to go. The EU has a ban on trading goods which can be used for execution of individuals or even their torture. It has constantly voiced its reservations with regards to the death penalty in international forums such as the United Nations. Additionally, the EU has also adopted various resolutions such as one in 2015 which condemned the use of the death penalty to suppress opposition or when it’s used citing grounds of religious opposition or homosexuality.[53]
An irreversible and violent act of punishment, we have seen why the capital punishment is irrational in nature. Spilling the blood of another man no way justifies how what the state only leads to the creation of more victims of legally sanctioned murder. We should all remember that killing the criminal does not kill the crime.
[1] Roger Hood, Capital Punishment, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Dec. 26, 2019), https://www.britannica.com/topic/capital-punishment/Arguments-for-and-against-capital-punishment..
[2] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 62/149 Moratorium on the use of the death penalty, A/62/439/Add.2, United Nations, undoc.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/RES/62/149.
[3]Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries as of July 2018, Amnesty International(1 July 2018).
[4]History of Death Penalty Laws, FindLaw, Thomson Reuters, https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/history-of-death-penalty-laws.html.
[5]Methods of Execution, Death Penalty Execution Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution.
[6]Supra, Note 4.
[7]Execution in the Middle Ages, History, https://www.history.co.uk/shows/britains-bloodiest-dynasty/articles/execution-in-the-middle-ages,.
[8] Early History of the Death Penalty, Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/history-of-the-death-penalty/early-history-of-the-death-penalty.
[9]Steven Wilf, Law’s Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal Justice in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press 2010).
[10] Michael H. Reggio, History of the Death Penalty, PBS Frontline, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/history-of-the-death-penalty/.
[11]Supra, Note 2.
[12] David Goran, Execution by Elephant: A strange method of capital punishment in ancient India, The Vintage News, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/14/execution-by-elephant-a-strange-method-of-capital-punishment-in-ancient-india/.
[13]N. V. Paranjape, Criminology and Penology 353, (Central Law Publication, 12thed.2011).
[14] Constituent Assembly Debates, 3 June 1949, Part II.
[15] Law Commission of India, July 1968, Report on the Punishment of Imprisonment for Life under the Indian Penal Code, Thirty-Ninth Report, Government of India.
[16]Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898,Section 367(5)[Repealed by Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act, 1955].
[17]Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act, 1955.
[18]Law Commission of India, July 1968, Report on the Punishment of Imprisonment for Life under the Indian Penal Code, Thirty-Ninth Report, Ministry of Law, Government of India.
[19]Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, Section 354(3).
[20]Ivneet Kaur Walia, Referrence of Deterrent Theory in Capital Punishment,Social Science Research Network(Dec. 18, 2009), https://ssrn.com/abstract=1525415.
[21]Raymond T. Bye, Capital Punishment in the United States 31-40(George Banta Co., Menasha, West Indies 1919).
[22]Jagmohan Singh v. State of U. P., (1973) 1 SCC 20.
[23] Furman v. Georgia,408 U.S. 238 (1972).
[24]Ibid.
[25]Gregg v. Georgia,428 U.S. 153 (1976).
[26]Jagmohan Singh v. State of U. P., (1973) 1 SCC 20.
[27] Rajendra Prasad v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (1979) 3 SCC 646.
[28] Dalbir Singh v. State of Punjab, (1979) 3 SCC 745.
[29] Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 684.
[30]Ibid.
[31]Mithu v. State of Punjab, (1983) 2 SCC 277.
[32]Deena v. Union of India, (1983) 4 SCC 645.
[33]T.V. Vatheswaran v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1983) 2 SCC 68.
[34]Sher Singh v. State of Punjab, (1983) 2 SCC 344.
[35]Law Commission of India, September1967, Capital Punishment, Thirty-Fifth Report, Ministry of Law, Government of India. Accessed: 17-01-2020.
[36]Shashi Nayar v. Union of India, (1992) 1 SCC 96.
[37]Vikram Singh v. Union of India, (2013) 16 SCC 450.
[38]Welsh S. White, Patterns in Capital Punishment, California Law Review(Sep. 2017),http://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/document/MzJRbDBoWHpjMTdjUFQ3RTFJdG5nUmdyN1Qwc0haUFg3eiszR3QydlBRMD0.
[39]Atkin I., Death Penalty, 1British Medical Journal, (1956), http://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/document/SGhmbVpJeXkyWlA4OFBMVHBtUjMxQlRzM0ZIdlUwWkZxKy9FZHRJLy9Waz0.
[40]Dr. Vimla Devi v. Delhi Administration, AIR 1963 SC1572.
[41]Incidence of cognizable crimes (IPC) under different crime heads during 1953–2007, National Crime Records Bureau, https://web.archive.org/web/20090619063832/http://ncrb.nic.in/CII2007/cii-2007/1953-2007.pdf.
[42]Persons arrested under crime against Women during 2001-2012, Government of India, https://visualize.data.gov.in/?inst=601c1745-b832-40ff-987c-84208aecdc52.
[43] Death Penalty: Is It Necessary?, Amnesty International Kenya, https://www.amnestykenya.org/death-penalty-necessary/.
[44]Ganesh Kumar Radha Udayakumar, Nirbhaya convicts hanging on Feb 1: Fresh death warrants, India Today Web Desk, India Today (Jan. 17, 2020),https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/nirbhaya-convicts-hanging-february-1-fresh-death-warrant-1637806-2020-01-17.
[45]Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, Section 366 (1).
[46] Death Penalty India Report, National University of Law, Delhi, National Law University, Delhi Press(February 2016), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a843a9a9f07f5ccd61685f3/t/5b68a29a6d2a73cbec1ec89f/1533584200675/Vol.I_Death+Penalty+Report.pdf.
[47] Justice Blackmun, Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141 (1994).
[48]Lethal Lottery: The Death Penalty in India, Amnesty International India and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (Tamil Nadu & Puducherry), Amnesty International(May 2008), https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/52000/asa200072008eng.pdf.
[49]Supra, Note 33.
[50] Hugh J. Klare, Death Penalty, 1 British Medical Journal, (Feb. 111956), http://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/document/SGhmbVpJeXkyWlA4OFBMVHBtUjMxRzJEUll3WVJEUHlrYVB5VFJ4SktwZz0.
[51] Craig S. Bernard, Death Penalty, Nova Law Review (Dec. 1989),http://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/document/N3FnUU90cmVWTC9NTWppeVBLMGVvc0UvWFJuOEpJYVZKdzFrWFBLdnF0QT0.
[52]Law Commission of India, August 2015, The Death Penalty, Report No. 262, Ministry of Law, Government of India. Accessed: 23-01-2020.
[53]Death penalty: key facts about the situation in Europe and the rest of the world, European Parliament, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/world/20190212STO25910/death-penalty-in-europe-and-the-rest-of-the-world-key-facts.
