Should Capital Punishment to Be Abolished or Not Essay Example for Free

Should Capital Punishment to Be Abolished or Not adjudicateAn eye for an eye would make the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi. This is a famous quote that many tribe cite when they pitch for the abolishment of capital penalisation ( stopping point penalization) from the judicial process. The lengthy list of the terms which be non quite acceptable in a democracy begins with terms like capital penalisation and goal penalty. That, however, doesnt mean that this form of punishment is not acceptable in a democracy. In fact, two of the largest democracies in the world India and the United defers of the advances, both stick out the preparedness for capital punishment as a part of their legal system. Indeed, the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in utmost(prenominal) crusades is an expression of the communitys belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the all adequate response may be the penalty o f remnant. Capital punishment is a barbarous pick from a less enlightened and refined age it is incongruous and incompatible with our present standard of shade and humanity.It has been abolished by many states and countries, and we must look for ward to the day when the other governments go away follow casing Capital punishment, also known as demolition penalty, is essentially the exe carvinging of an individual as punishment for offense by a state. The crimes which can lead to capital punishment are called capital crimes or capital offenses. Earlier, the killing of criminals and political opp atomic number 53nts was prevalent in most every civilization. With the time, nearly all European and several Pacific Area states (counting Australia, New Zealand and Timor Leste), and Canada make up abolished demolition penalty.The majority of states in Latin America have absolutely abolished capital punishment, however, a a few(prenominal) countries, like Brazil, use decease penal ty besides in special situations, for example, treachery committed during wartime. thither are still quite a few states and countries that retain the use of capital punishment, including the United States (the federal government and 36 of its states), Guatemala, majority of the Caribbean, Japan, India, and Africa (Botswana and Zambia). In almost all retentionist countries, capital punishment is granted as a penalty for planned murder, espionage, treachery, or as part of military justice.Recently, the grounds of Mohammad Afzal, a terrorist who was found guilty of instigating the attack on the Indian fan tan House, has cropped up the controversy regarding the Indian virtue of capital punishment. Right to Life Capital Punishment in India In India, capital punishment is granted for different crimes, counting murder, initiating a childs suicide, instigating war against the government, acts of terrorism, or a second evidence for drug trafficking. remnant penalty is officially permi tted though it is to be used in the ra roost of rare cases as per the judgement of Supreme Court of India.Amongst the retentionist countries around the world, India has the lowest doing rate with just 55 people executed since independence in 1947. Since the condition of the rarest of rare is not exactly defined, some generation even less horrific murders have been awarded capital punishment owing to ridiculous justification by lawyers. Since 1992, there are about(predicate) 40 mercy petitions pending before the president. The proposals for abolishment of finale execration for petty offences was brought about but there was a lot of hue and clapperclaw from lawyers , judges and parliamentarians and the so called protectors of social order.Six times the House of Commons passed the bill and six times the House of Lords rejected the kindred. With the passage of time, the voice for abolition of expiration penalty grew stronger over the world especially in Britain. However, in spi te of opposition, the bill was passed and the number of cases in which capital punishment was awarded was reduced year after year and closing penalty was reserved for offences like murder and treason. Currently, in the world 133 countries have abolished capital punishment dejure or defacto. 64 countries have retained it.Bangladesh is one of them. (source Amnesty International Website) In UK , death penalty was abolished in 1965 except for offences of treason and certain forms of piracy and offences committed by members of the gird Forces during wartime. In India , the recent trend is clearly towards the abolition of death sentence. Before the amendment of Criminal Procedure enactment in 1955, it was obligatory for a court to give reasons for not awarding death sentence in case of murder. Under the Criminal Procedure figure, 1973, the court has to record reasons for awarding death sentence.A tender-hearted secondary of biography imprisonment is gaining judicial ground in Indi a . In a leading case of Bachan Sing v. State of Punjab(1980) 2 SCC 684,the Supreme Court held by a majority of four to one that the provisions of death sentence as an alternative punishment for murder in section 302 of penal Code was not erroneous and was in the public bear on. The dissenting view of judge Bhagwati was that instead of death sentence, the sentence of life imprisonment should be imposed. He put emphasis on barbarity and pitilessness involved in death sentence.It is irrevocable and cannot be recalled. It extinguishes the flame of life for ever. It is destructive of the chastise to life which is the most precious right of all, a right without which enjoyment of no other right is possible. Justice Bhagwati rejects the view that death penalty acts as a disapproverent against latent murderers. According to him, this view is a myth which has been carefully nurtured by a society which is actuated not so much by logic or reason as by a sense of retribution. Conclusion It has been pledged in the preamble of the republics constitution that equality and justice will be secured for all citizens. The liberation heroes had dedicated their lives with a view to establishing a welfare state in which entire human rights and freedoms and respect for the dignity and cost of the human person shall be guaranteed. Protection against cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment is a funda psychological right under art. 35 (4) of the constitution. So time has come to reconsider death sentence as a means of punishment.The worlds trend is precisely towards the correction of the offenders in lieu of inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Bangladesh as a democratic country cannot lag behind. The state is undergoing cumulative increase of crimes owing to a great fill out of factors such as lack of good governance, absence of rule of law, corruption, patronisation of terrorists, wide gap between the haves and have-nots, confrontational politics and so on. I nstead of giving emphasis on removing these factors, we are wrongly attempting to check crimes by inflicting exemplary punishment.What is a rarest of rare case? In the Bachan Singh judgment of 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be used only in the rarest of rare cases. More than a quarter of a century later, it is clear that through the failure of the courts and the State authorities to apply consistently the procedures lay knock off by law and by that judgment, the Courts strictures remain unfulfilled. In a judgment delivered in December 2006, a Supreme Court bench admitted the Courts failure to evolve a sentencing policy in capital cases (Aloke Nath Dutta and ors. . State of West Bengal (MANU/SC/8774/2006)). The bench examined judgments over the past two decades in which the Supreme Court adjudicated upon whether a case was one of the rarest of the rare or not and concluded What would constitute a rarest of rare case must be determined in the fact situat ion obtaining in each case sic. We have also noticed hereinbefore that different criteria have been adopted by different benches of this Court, although the offences are akin in nature.Because the case involved offences under the same provision, the same by itself may not be a ground to lay down any uniform criteria for awarding a death penalty or a lesser penalty as several factors therefore are required to be taken into consideration. The frustration of the Court was evident when it stated No sentencing policy in clear cut terms has been evolved by the Supreme Court. What should we do? In that particular ruling, the Court commuted the appellants death sentence.On the same day, however, another bench of the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence imposed on an appellant who had convicted of murdering his married woman and four children (Bablu Mubarik Hussain v. State of Rajasthan (AIR 2007 SC 697)). After referring to the importance of reformation and rehabilitation of offender s as among the foremost objectives of the presidency of criminal justice in the country, the judgment merely referred to the appellants declaration of the murders as evidence of his lack of remorse.There was no discussion of the specific situation of the appellant, the motive for the killings or the possibility of reform in his case. Death Penalty Statistics A look at the death penalty statistics of the world reveals that around 90 part of the countries have already abolished the death penalty. These countries include Portugal, Venezuela, France, Canada, etc. This, however, hasnt turned out to be as high-yield as expected, because some of the major countries in the world, including China, India and the United States, still ontinue the use of death penalty execution as a part of their legal system. Statistics also reveal that approximately 80 percent of the death penalty executions the world over, come from the Asian countries, with China at the forefront with the highest executio n rate in the world. In fact, the number of executions in China alone in 2008 was double the number of executions in the rest of the world combined for that year. CONSTITUTIONALITY OF DEATH PENALTY IN INDIAImposing of death sentence is one function that always gets more attention to be discussed, including from the view of primitive validity in each countries. A serious discussion regarding to death sentence in Indonesia, whether it should be continued or abolished, has come up before the Court after some applicant applied a petition to Indonesian thoroughgoing Court in order to challenge the constitutionality of death penalty in Drugs and Narcotic Act against the provision of Rights to Life on Indonesian Constitution, 1945.This article is the first chapter of several other chapters with the topic of death penalty which will be flattened on the following days. *** The provision of death penalty as an alternative punishment for murder under s. 302, IPC1 was challenged as constitut ionally invalid being violate of Arts. 14,2 193 and 214 of the Constitution in a series of cases. It was contended in Jagmohan Singh v. State of U. P. 5 that the constitutional validity of death sentence has to be tried with reference to Arts. 14 and 19 besides Art. 1 of the Constitution as the right to life is fundamental to the enjoyment of all these freedoms as contained in Art. 19 of the Constitution. It was further contended that the Code of Criminal Procedure convinced(p) the procedure of finding guilt of an accused but regarding the sentence to be awarded under s. 302, IPC the unguided and lordless discretion has been left to the Judge to decide the sentence to be awarded. The Supreme Court held that the death sentence as an alternative punishment under s. 302, IPC s not unreasonable and it is in the public interest and the procedural safeguard provided to the accused under the Code of Criminal Procedure is not unreasonable difference the discretion with the judge to sent ence an accused, convicted for murder either to death or life imprisonment Death sentence as an alternative punishment for life was held valid. Though the court did not accept the fray that the validity of the sentence to death has to be tested in the light of Arts. 14 and 10 of the Constitution. only if in Rajendra Prasad v. State of U. P. 6 the court accept the proposition that the validity of the death sentence can be tested with reference to Arts. 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court suggested that in exceptional circumstances death sentence should be imposed only when public interest, social defence and public order would warrant. such extreme penalty should be imposed in extreme circumstances. The court in Barchan Singh v. State of Punjab7 upheld that constitutional validity of death sentence. The court reasoned that penal law does not attract Art. 19(1) of the Constitution.If the impact of the law on nay of the rights under Art. 19(1) is merely incidental, indirect, remote or collateral, Art. 19 would not be ready(prenominal) for testing its validity. Accordingly, the court held that s. 302, IPC for its validity would not require to qualify the test of Art. 19. The procedure provided in the Code of Criminal Procedure for imposing capital punishment for murder cannot be said to be unfair, unreasonable and unjust. But Justice Bhagwati in his dissenting judgment held that s. 302, IPC and s. 354(3), Cr PC violation of Arts. 4 and 21 as these provisions confers unguided power on the court which irrational and arbitrary. Thus, death sentence should be imposed in the rarest of the rare case. The Supreme Court in Machhi Sing v State of Punjab8 laid down the broad outlines of the circumstances when death sentence should be imposed. It should be considered whether there is something uncommon about the crime and the compelling circumstances for imposing death sentence after giving maximum pitch age of the mitigating circumstances which is fav our of the accused.Jumman Kahn was facing the gallows on being sentenced to death for having brutally raped and strangulated to death a six year old girl named Sakina. The convict challenged the death sentence and its constitutionality. 9 It was argued that death penalty is not only outmoded, unreasonable, cruel and unusual punishment but also defies the dignity of the individual and the bulge needs reconsideration which stands like sentinel over human misery, degradation and oppression.The Supreme Court musical composition endorsing its earlier view as to the constitutionality of death sentence held that the failure to impose death sentence is such grave cases here it is a crime against the society, particularly in case of murders with extreme brutality will bring to naught the sentence of death penalty provided by s. 302 of IPC. The only punishment which the convict deserves for having committed the reprehensible and gruesome murder of the innocent child to satisfy his lust is n othing but death as a measure of social necessity and also a means of deterring other potential offenders. The Supreme Court in earlier case Banchan Singh v.State Punjab10 upheld the constitutional validity of imposition of death sentence as an alternative to life imprisonment and it was further that it is not violate of Arts. 14 and 21 of the Constitution. Chief Justice Chandrachud expressing the view of the three Judges of the Supreme Court in Sher Singh v State of Punjab11 held that death sentence is constitutionally valid and permissible within the constrains of the rule in Bachan Singh (supra). This has to be accepted as the law of the land. The decisions rendered by this court after full debate has to be accepted without mental reservation until they are set aside.The challenge touching the constitutionality of the death sentence also surfaced in Triveniben v State of Gujarat12 and in Allauddins case13 and the Supreme Court asserted affirmatively that the Constitution does not prohibit the death penalty. It is in the rare cases, the legislature in its wisdom, considered it necessary impose the extreme punishment of death to deter others and to protect the society. The choice of sentence is left with the rider that the judge may visit the convict with extreme punishment provided there exist special reasons for doing so.