SC moves away from death penalty

The Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of a youth for raping and killing a seven-year-old girl but awarded him 25 year jail term, saying that judicial innovation was required in awarding appropriate punishment between death sentence and life imprisonment in heinous crimes.

What has the court said?

• The court has said that the offence did not come within the ambit of rarest of rare case but also held that life imprisonment of 14 years would not be sufficient punishment for the crime committed.
• Holding that innovative approach is needed to award sentence in such cases, the court directed that the convict must spent 25 years behind the jail.
• The court has also held that judicial innovation for bridging the gap between death sentence on the one extreme and only 14 years of actual imprisonment in the name of life imprisonment on the other, serves a laudable purpose and does not violate any law in the Indian Penal Code or in the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Significance of this judgment:

The innovative approach reflected in this case, on the one hand helps the convict in getting rid of death penalty in appropriate cases, on the other it takes care of genuine concerns of the victim including the society by ensuring that life imprisonment shall actually mean imprisonment for whole of the natural life or to a lesser extent as indicated by the court in the light of facts of a particular case.

Background:

A judicial innovation was formalised by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in the Rajiv Gandhi killers’ case in December 2015, instead of the death penalty.

This judicial innovation helps get rid of death penalty and addresses the genuine concerns of the society to see justice done.

• This innovative approach veering away from capital punishment was formalised after the Supreme Court gave itself the authority to tweak the sentencing laws and evolve a special category of sentence in its judgment in Union of India versus Sriharan alias Murugan last year.
• The innovation is an endeavour by the apex court to make “no party (convict or the society) a loser”.

What is special category?

The innovation involves substituting death penalty with a “special category” of life imprisonment without the benefit of release on remission for prolonged periods ranging from 25 to 30 years, if not more.

• The special category is to be limited to a “very few cases”. This special category finds its first mention in the Swami Shraddananda versus State of Karnataka judgment of the Supreme Court in 2008.