Few and Far Between: Recent SC Decisions on Death Penalty

In a recent Supreme Court judgment in Manoharan v. State [Rev. Pet. (Crl.) No. 446/2019] pronounced on November 8, 2019, it was declared that the dissent of a judge in a review petition against death penalty would not lead to reversing the decision of the death penalty. This judgment highlighted the fact that once punishments like death penalty are awarded, any attempts at reversing such decision are difficult to succeed in cases where the circumstances clearly show that the action shocked the conscience of the society.

However, last month, the Supreme Court rehashed the doctrines of residual doubts and prudence in the cases of Ravishankar v. State of Madhya Pradesh [Crl. App. 1523/2019] and Sudam v. State of Maharashtra [Rev. Pet. (Crl.) No. 401/2012] respectively. Relying on these doctrines the Court commuted the death sentence awarded to the convicts in the review petitions so filed. The doctrine of prudence originates from the doctrine of residual doubts itself. The latter was clearly explained for the first time in the case of Ashok Debbarma v. State of Tripura [(2014) 4 SCC 747] as-

Remaining or lingering doubts about the defendant's guilt which might remain at the sentencing stage despite satisfaction of the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard during conviction.

Furthermore, in a 2016 case of Union of India v. Murugan [(2016) 7 SCC 1], the Supreme Court further promulgated the doctrine of special sentencing which provides for life imprisonment without any chances of remission as a substitute for the death penalty.

The reasoning of the Supreme Court in recent decisions concerning death penalty has been far from consistent. At one point, the Supreme Court is lenient and promulgates doctrines for saving death penalty thereby re-emphasizing the rarest of the rare case doctrine. On the other, the Supreme Court is ignoring the patent doubts shown by a judge of the Apex Court (the dissenting judge) in casting a sentence of capital punishment on the convict thereby neglecting the previous judgments pronounced by the Supreme Court just a month earlier.

It is not clear whether the Supreme Court truly favours keeping the punishment of death penalty but the decisions have been few and far between. It is not intended that the death penalty should be abolished but if it is a part of statute book and the legislature does not seem it appropriate to strike it off, multiple formulations of doctrines to shy away from pronouncing death penalty is also not appropriate. If such is the tendency, then the judges should bring forth some constructive suggestions as to the merits in abolishing death penalty and stick to a similar line of approach.