3 for 1

This post is on the judgment in a case of murder by burning – three people sentenced to death for burning to death of a woman. As per the news item I read [1].

The last reason (?) standing in favor of death penalty is revenge.

Capital punishment violates balance between the crime and punishment except through the meaningless arithmetic of revenge – a life for life. Deterrence has not worked. The cost factor, besides being frivolous, still favors incarceration without chance for parole. If there are additional reasons, I can only say that stupidity knows no bounds. Therefore, let us take that revenge is the only sustainable reason for maintaining this barbarity on our statute books.

Now, the current judgment – the 3 for 1 case - has made even that reason unsustainable. Three people have been condemned to death for the single life murdered. Two people (men) brought the victim down from her room to the scene of the crime, one man “tied her neck with an elastic rope”, the lone woman “caught hold of her hands”, one man “poured kerosene on her body, lit a matchstick, and set her on fire …” From this, it has been judged that the murder deserved to be treated as one of the rarest-of-the-rare cases. I am no one to dispute that. All the three have been handed down the ultimate, the irrevocable punishment. It is now three lives for one life. Revenge gone crazy.

There is no denying that all three were proximately guilty to nearly, and not exactly, the same extent and this is where the problem lies. Could the judge have graded the death penalty among the three? “You, who set her on fire, go first; you, who helped bring the victim to the scene of the crime, enjoy life for two more days; and you, go last, say after a week after the second, because you did not do much more than catching hold of the victim’s hands.”

Pouring kerosene on a person and setting her on fire is not the same as catching hold of the victim’s hands, you will agree. This can only mean that the judgment applies the rarest-of-the-rare tag to the planning of the crime, the premeditated nature rather than to the act of the crime. The judgment opens up some aspects of criminal cases that offer possibilities to be judged rarest-of-the-rare.

Anyone involved in planning of crimes which may even unintentionally turn into rarest-of-the-rare should be held accountable to the same degree as the actual perpetrators. If the deterrence theory is valid, after these three are murdered by the state, planning for rarest-of-the-rare will be deterred and we can hope murders too, including those by the state, will be reduced.

And, as it is established that deterrence does not work, holding on to death penalty can only mean that 3 for 1 is true justice.

Thus speaks revenge.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P.S Isn’t this a nice coincidence that the judgment came just days before Good Friday, where three people (Jesus and two common criminals) were crucified?

Reference

1.    Death penalty for three of a family in murder case, The Hindu, April 4, 2012