Death or Life for Convict?
'DEATH and if not life', 'death or life', ‘life and if not death', is the swinging progression of the criminal jurisprudence in India as far as capital punishment is concerned. The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898,under Section 367(5) reads:
"If the accused is convicted of an offence punishable with death, and the Court sentences him to any punishment other than death, the Court shall in its judgment state the reason why sentence of death was not passed."
However, when the new Code of Criminal Procedure was enacted in the year 1973 (hereinafter referred to as‘the Cr.PC'), a paradigm shift was introduced, making it mandatory for Courts to state special reasons for awarding death sentence, under Section354(3), which reads as follows:
"When the conviction is for an offence punishable with death, or, in the alternative, with imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term of years, the judgment shall state the reasons for the sentence awarded, and, in the case of sentence of death, the special reasons for such sentence."
In the words of Krishna Iyer J. in Ediga Anamma vs. State of Andhra Pradesh:
"20. The unmistakable shift in legislative emphasis is that life imprisonment for murder is the rule and capital sentence the exception to be resorted to for reasons to be stated. …"
Now life imprisonment is the rule and death, is the exception.
(from a Supreme Court judgement delivered yesterday)