By Kiran Sangam 1. Introduction The world is developing; man is developing, so crimes are developing. Crime has become a universal factor in the society. It is antiquotous in society. In day today life we come across a series of crimes such as rape, murder, adultery etc. Due to development of man socially, organically and psychologically, the crimes have locked horns with the society. As the criminal behaviour of man supports him to commit heinous crimes Rapists rape, murderers murder etc., it was also a problem in the history. The nature of man is becoming very cruel, selfish as to commit offences as he likes, for this punishment is prescribed by the law for the offenders of its provisions to serve many different purposes. First, the suffering it inflicts on offenders satisfies the communitys demand for what is called vengeance, retribution, retaliation, atonement, reprobation or justice, second, it may be regarded as a positive means of converting an offender into a consciously moral person. Third, it may make him law abiding simply by causing him to fear what would happen to him if he were to commit a crime again. Fourth, it would serve as an object lesson to other potential law violators. Fifth, by depriving him of his life or liberty it would completely prevent or temporarily or permanently curtail his criminal activities. The supreme object of all measures taken to fulfill these aims is to achieve the protection of the community and strengthening general respect for law and justice. For strengthening general respect for law and justice and preventing the heinous crimes capital punishment is been introduced. Death sentence is a capital punishment; it is awarded for heinous and grievous crimes. In old testament death penalty was prescribed for blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, false worship, Sabbath breaking, murder, adultery, incest, sodomy, bestiality, man stealing (kidnapping), false witness, reviling the magistrates, cursing or smiting of parents. 2. What is Death Sentence? The term Death sentence stands for most severe form of punishment. It is the punishment which is to be awarded for the most heinous, grievous and detestable crimes against humanity. Death sentence means legal punishment of death for a crime ; it is a order for criminals execution. Death sentence is awarded to the most serious crimes such as treason , blasphemy , murder , rape , incest , bestiality , adultery , bigamy , for sex offences and drug trafficking and armed robbery. The death sentence is a unique means of deterring people from committing capital crimes and protecting society. The services to the community that the death penalty might be expected to perform are 1) The satisfaction of the demand for retribution by making the crime pay for his misdeed with his life
2) The realization of the hope that his execution will discourage others from committing capital crimes, i.e., general deterrence.
3) The removal of the danger that his survival would pose to society, i.e., prevention. Death sentence is awarded to the rarest of rare cases. 3. A Brief Historical Overview of the Death Sentence As a form of penalty, death sentence prevailed in the earliest Law of Moses which has had a significant influence on the shaping of capital justice in Western World. After bringing his people out of Egypt, the Lord, according to the Bible , gave Moses on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments , to guide their conduct. Mosaic Law prescribed death sentences to adultery, murder, rape, working on Sabbath day, blasphemy, kidnapping and theft. Who ever commit all the above crime was stoned to death by the community. The Republic of Israel was constituted in 1948. Its parliament the Knesset abandoned the Mosaic law of a Lie for a life and abolished the death penalty in 1954 except for treason in wartime and for Nazi collaborators. Hammurabi came out with his code of laws which is known as Hammurabi code which are thousand years old. Hammurabi code delays when ever hurt is done, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound. Hebrew laws prescribed death sentence for crimes like adultery, rape, bestiality, blasphemy and non observances. Death penalty was frequently practiced among Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. Greek law generally regarded homicide, treason and sacrileges as capital offences. The Romans were very hard in punishing the criminals. In Ancient India during the Mughal period King Akbar in 1852 forbade to award death penalty. The king himself acted as a judge for serious crimes. Death penalty could be inflicted by hanging , beheading , and impaling . Execution could take place by throwing a man down from the roof. Another common method was to get him criminal trampled under the feet of elephants. The other forms of punishing were leaving them in a room full of poisonous snakes. Yet another method was to get the criminal torn to pieces by dogs. The culprits were thrown to the crocodiles in the ditch. They awarded death penalty for rape, blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, etc. After all this church came into existence, it got power to rule, to punish, and to maintain law and order. It awarded dearth penalty severely. The various methods of execution were the Babylonians used drowning, the Hebrews stoned. The Greeks allowed a free man to take poison but a slave was beaten to death. Roman usages included precipitation fro the Tarpian rock, strangulations, exposure to wild beasts, crucifixion and for patricide, the coleus (drowning a condemned man in a sack with a cock, a viper and a dog.
In Britain hanging was generally used. In France it was the guillotine , in Spain the garrote was used and the head mans axe to the life of convicts in Germany. In USA the criminal was executed by the electric chair or the gas chamber, or by lethal gas or lethal injection In India the offender is hanged by neck. In Iran executions are carried out behind the prison walls and public executions are made. It is to be noted that for centuries death penalty was not debated so far as its legitimacy or its practical utility was concerned. Its acceptance in ancient societies seems to have depended on three principal causes. a) In significant values attached to human life or at least, to the life of any particular individual.
b) Death of the criminal was considered to be just and necessary because for deviation must pay.
c) The death penalty was to find natural support by the arrival or gradual establishment of an all powerful state. 4. Reasons for Retention of Death Sentence Death Sentence constitutes the only secure incapacitation that it increases respect for criminal law, and the execution of a person will serve as a warning to others who might plan crimes. Since murder is a heinous crime, the murderers should be punished with extreme penalty as a form of retaliation. The murderer or the crime does should suffer in equal measure and only then justice is done. In many cases it is life imprisonment for the criminals but after releasing from the imprisonment, this may result in the culprits repeating the crime, so death sentence is necessary. The retention of the death sentence will means a considerable saving to the sate. A condemned man is usually kept in prison for a year prior to his execution, where as life imprisonment will be probably 14 years or more behind bars. This becomes a great economic burden on the state. It is not accepted that to remain criminals in the society, death sentence will eliminate the dangerous criminals forever. The death sentence would thus been an agency for weeding out the criminals. 5) Abolition for Death sentence Laws are for maintaining peace and order in a society not killing one for his misdeeds. Give him a chance to make himself walk on correct path. If he is been executed what about the people who are depended on him, the law should foresee it. So the death sentence seems to be inconvenient to the society. The death penalty carries an under-current of sadism. Many people revel at the thought of an execution. Although the throng cannot hope to be spectators at the execution, they derive a vicarious thrill of pleasure from merely standing near the scene. Social and economic forces create criminals, an elimination of the breeding spots of crime should be the primary consideration of society, not the elimination of the criminals who are spawned by the degenerating environment. The death penalty is not applied impartially. It is applied unfairly. Even some premeditated murderers can avoid the extreme penalty by employing astute counsel and engaging in legal chicanery the socially, economically and politically powerful have a good change of obstructing or bending their advantage the first three phases of the process of justice. The poorer defendant is obviously at a disadvantage. Frequently, she/he receives the extreme penalty while the accused escapes with a prison on term. Public Hanging of an accused sentenced to death is violative of Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Dissenting with the majority view Mr. Justice Krishna Iyer pleaded for abolition of death penalty in Rameshwar v. State of U.P. He observed: Since every saint had a past and every sinner a future, never write of the man wearing the criminal veneer attire but remove the dangerous degeneracy in him, restore his retarded human potential by holistic healing of his fevered, fatigued or frustrated inside and by repairing the repressive, thought hidden injustice of the social order which is vicariously guilty of the criminal behaviour of many innocent convicts. 6. Death Sentence in India The framers of Indian Penal Code were of the view that death penalty ought to be used sparingly. The position of death penalty has not changed as such in more than hundred years of its existence, but the trend in the direction of abolition of capital punishment in many countries has affected legislative as well as judicial thinking on the subject. The purpose of punishment is two told in India. i) To prevent the commission of any act injurious to the society To deter the prospective criminals from committing crime besides punishing those who summit an offence. The quantum of punishment is determined with reference to the gravity of the offence committed by the offender. Death penalty is imposed in rarest of rare cases. Under the code of criminal procedure 1898, death sentence was a rule and life imprisonment an exception. The method of execution of capital punishment in India is hanging by neck. In India the Indian Penal Code in Section 302 gives punishment of death for murder.
S. 302. Punishment for murder --- Whoever commits murder shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable for fine. This section provides punishment for murder. Life imprisonment is the rule and death penalty is an exception in an offence of murder. Section 354 (b) of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 requires that special reasons should be recorded while awarding death penalty. Where from the accusers conduct it appears the he is genuinely repentant for his conduct and desires to atone for the grievous wrong done by him, the Court by taking overall view of all circumstances of the substitute death sentence by sentence of life imprisonment. An accused can be held guilty of murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence if the circumstances unerringly point to the guilt of the accused and they are consistent with his guilt. In a conviction for murder if direct evidence is satisfactory and reliable the same cannot be rejected on hypothetical medical evidence. In Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, the Honble Supreme Court up-holding the validity of the death penalty expressed the opinion that capital punishment should be awarded in the rarest of rare cases and in that case it would not violate Article 19 and 21. In Rajendra Prasad v. State of U.P , In his majority opinion Justice Krishna Iyer observed Special reasons necessary for imposing death penalty most relate, not to the crime as such but to the criminal. The crime may be shocking and yet the criminal may not deserve death penalty. The crime may be les shocking than other murders and yet the callous criminal, e.g. a lethal economic offender, may be jeopardizing societal existence by his act of murder. Likewise, a hardened murderer or dacoit or armed robber who kills and relishes killing and raping and murdering to such an extent that he is beyond rehabilitation within a reasonable period according to current psychotherapy or curative techniques may deserve the terminal sentence society survives by security for ordinary life. The extreme penalty can be invoked only in extreme situations. Mr. Justice Sen: Observed it is only in very grave cases where it is a crime against the society and the brutality of the crime shocks the judicial conscience that court has power, as well as the duty, to impose the death sentence. Death sentence will be imposed depending upon the degree of criminality and desirability. In Jagmohan Singh vs State of U.P , it was argued that death sentence was unconstitutional and violates the fundamental right to live. It was contended that death sentence violates the Articles 19 and 21 of the constitution. The Supreme Court forther urged that Articles 19 and 21 are permissible within the constitutional limits, can not be understood to co-exist with that legislative attempt on the destruction of life can not be deemed to be a reasonable restriction. 7. Conclusion Death sentence is a severe form of punishment which is awarded in rarest of rare case. It is given to very serious and heinous crimes like treason, rape, murder etc., it is one of the oldest capital punishment in the world. Earlier it was used thoroughly for serious crimes. Many countries are still retentioning death sentence because of mass crimes in day today life, to protect society and bring an order in the society the capital punishment is required. But some countries have abolished the capital punishment thinking of it being a cruel punishment. The idealist thinking has made then to abolish death sentence. Utmost we can come to a conclusion that the debate of death penalty whether retention or abolition goes on. But the death sentence cant be fully abolished because of the increase in crime rate. It is necessary over and out. It become necessary to cite Lord Denning as he said: the justification of any punishment is not that it is deterrent but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of the crime. References
Books
1) Sellin Thorston, The Penalty of Death, Vol. 102, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills London, 1980. Articles 1) Dipen Sabharwal, Debating the Death penalty: Retention or Abolition, 1999 LT,vol 7, p 3.26- 3.29
2) Fr. Jayaseelan S.J., Hang the Death Penalty, A Debate, Legal news and Views, vol 14 no 1, Jan 2000 pp. 18-22
3) Mustafa Faizan, Mandatory Death Sentence: Still Continues, 1995 Cr. L.J.pp.1-6
4) Nadgoudar S.V., Need for Death penalty in India, IBR, vol 29, No.1, Jan-March 2002, pp 45-54
5) Upadhaya. R.P., Death penalty in India, Central India Law Quarterly, vol. 5.3, 1992, pp. 400-404 Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kiran_Sangam http://EzineArticles.com/?Death-Sentence&id=477342 ambien drug side effect
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