Pinnacle Court Said It’s Not Their Effort To Make Death Penalty "Redundant"

Supreme Court: the highest court dealt well with the legal arguments often utilized by ward convicts on the problem of sentencing.

The judicial process would be compromising on its objectivity if the approach is to seek out ways to avoid awarding capital punishment in cases where they passed the muster of judicial scrutiny, the Supreme Court said on Friday.

The top court, while awarding the executing to a person for kidnapping, raping, and killing a seven-and-half-year-old mentally and physically challenged girl in 2013, dealt thoroughly with the legal arguments often employed by cellblock convicts on the problem of sentencing.

The Supreme Court said it's never been the trouble of the courts to somehow make execution “redundant and non-existent for all practical purposes.” “The seek justice in such cases, with death sentences being awarded and maintained only in extreme cases, doesn't mean that the matter would be approached and examined within the manner that death sentence has been avoided, whether or not the matter indeed demand such a punishment.

“The judicial process, in our view, would be compromising on its objectivity if the approach is to nullify the statutory provision carrying death sentence as an alternate punishment for major offences (like that of Section 302 IPC), even after it's passed the muster of judicial scrutiny and has been held not unconstitutional,” said a bench of justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar.

The pursuit of collecting mitigating circumstances could also not be obsessed with any notion or concept that “somehow, some factor be found; or if not found, be deduced anyhow so the sentence of death be forsaken”, it said, adding “Such an approach would be unrealistic, unwarranted and rather not upholding the rule of law”.

It also handled the legal aspect where the convicts, usually, plead for the imposition of a life rather than the corporal punishment if the cases are supported evidence.

It said the plea seeking lesser punishment by using the concept of “residual doubt” in cases supported evidence isn't available to convicts after the conclusion of guilt during a criminal case.

The top court said in an exceedingly case supported circumstantial proof, it absolutely was not expected to reopen the chain of such evidence to seek out any weak link to plead for a lesser sentence for the offence.

“To put the record straight, we deem it appropriate to look at that within the case supported evidence, the conclusion of guilt is recorded only after the circumstances are found to be forming an unbreakable chain, so consistent on rule out the other hypothesis except the guilt of the accused,” the 129-page verdict, penned by Justice Maheshwari, said.

It said requirement being proof of the case beyond an affordable doubt, “theoretically there's no scope for any ‘residual doubt' operating even within the cases of evidence.” It said if there was doubt about the evidence then the conviction itself goes and there was absolute confidence of seeking lesser punishment.

“The cases within which the idea of residual doubt has in the slightest degree been mentioned had been standing on their own facts, where an alternate to a death sentence was considered appropriate.

"However, while absorbing the matter for sentencing, it's not expected to reopen the chain of indirect evidence to search out any weak link which can fall within the category of residual doubt,” it said.

If in any respect any such doubt within reason existing then, the very basis of conviction would be in question, it said.

“To put it in other words, after the ultimate conclusion on the guilt and after pronouncing conviction, no concept of residual doubt per se is on the market for the aim of sentencing,” it said.