Death penalty contradicts the core objectives of the criminal justice system.

The core principles of criminal justice system is to deliver justice for all by convicting and punishing the guilty for his/her offences and helping them stop offending while protecting the innocent. In other words the central purpose of criminal justice system is to deliver efficient, effective and fair justice to the general public. The whole idea of justice is not to punish a person but to provide him sufficient time to reinvent himself and live the rest of his life by positively contributing to the society. Thus, judiciary or justice systems around the world are meant to make people a civilized way of living.

The debate of over death penalty in India are decades old . As per the Indian penal code act 1860 only two crimes are to be given Death penalty viz for murder !ec. "0#$ and waging war against the state . Hence the justice system in India allows for death sentence for crimes committed under these two categories. The supreme court of India has time and against validated the relevance and importance of death penalty with some checks and balances.

ut the real !uestion here is whether this barbaric act adheres to the norms of a civilized and progressive society" The answer will be a big #$%&. There is no place for barbarism in modern civilized society. The famous Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria in his paper An essay on crimes and punishment has made some sparkling points with regards to death penalty. He coined two important concepts on this. One the objective o the death penalty is to deter uture commission o crimes and to re orm the o ender. !he irst among these objectives has not achieved as o now and the latter is not achievable at all.

!he greater "uestion here is whether there is any o empirical evidence to suggest or# rather prove the mandate or death penalty$ As o now% there is no proven evidence to suggest that &eath penalty can be an e ective deterrent in curbing#reducing any o the crimes anywhere in the world. 'tatistics do suggest that the crime rates in states where there are no death penalties is lower than that o those having it though on a smaller margin. (t has been shown that in )'A where the level o crimes is lower in states where the capital punishment is not a mode o punishment. ( we take the case o (ndia where we have capital punishments since our independence suggest the same thing. !he crimes rates never reduced in our country. (t shows a level o increasing trend in the last two decades especially the number o heinous crimes are on all time high recently.

!he 'C% in the Bactchan 'ingh *' 'tate o +unjab% has made some check and balances by bringing the concept o ,arest o the ,are while awarding capital punishment. But% the 'C has not proscribed what should be and what ought to be the ,arest o ,are cases. (t simply le t it to the wisdom o judges .(n such cases% we can say that that judgment will subject to the benches which the case goes or hearing. !his leaves the chances or subjective and prejudiced judgments which are clearly against the principle of equality which is enshrined in our constitution.

!he other issue includes the delay in justice delivery system. As told by -rishna Ayer .ustice delayed is justice denied. /ore than a do0en cases mercy petitions are pending be ore the president. And also there are lots o cases pending be ore various judges awaiting judgments. (n the recent past the case o +erarivalan and 1 others where the clemency petition was dishonored by the president a ter 22 years. (sn3t a humanitarian approach where these convicts have to undergo mental trauma or the past 22 years$ 4ot only them but their amily too underwent the same level o agony in all these time.

!he other issue is related to error in the pronouncement o capital punishment by the higher judiciary. As mentioned earlier 'C 5s in the 2678 case where it brought the concept o ,arest o the rare concept has much laws than merits. (n 1921 justice '.B. 'inha and Cyriac joseph retired 'C judges has said that there were errors in the judgments o theirs in awarding death sentence to 28 people. Out o the 28 convicts% 1 were already hanged in the due course. !hey have asked president to look into the matter at the earliest so that any more error may not be committed. (t implies the concept o irrecoverability.

Once a li e is taken away it is taken away orever and nobody can give back at any time. And i such open admissions o judges continue abated automatically this will lead to a situation where people will take law in their hands an o our democracy. 4obody in this world is a born criminal. (t is the circumstances and the society makes them so. 'o nobody can ever escape rom by simply blaming the criminals. !he greater "uestion here is about how to trans orm the society to be more civili0ed and and pragmatic$$$ As rightly pointed out by great ather o our nation /ahatma :andhi An eye or an eye makes the whole world blind.

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