Do you understand death sentence?

This was the question posed by a two member Bench of the Supreme Court of India to the judges of a trial court and a sessions court that pronounced and sustained the sentence death to two convicts in a murder case. So, it is not a knee-jerk liberal who is posing this question. This came as relief to me as I read Supreme Court pulls up trial judge for queer death sentence, in The Hindu of December 22, 2012.

It is rather surprising that the Supreme Court had to caution (why not go beyond mere cautioning?) “[T]rail courts not to be influenced by the views expressed by judges or academicians on a private platform.” Read the list of things criminal courts should not be influenced by: “opinions, predilection, fondness, inclination, proclivity.” Does the reader understand that every single one of them imbues the process of judgment with singular lack of objectivity? It is in this environment suffused with arbitrariness some of our enlightened public cry out for death penalty for this and that crime.

The “trial court had opined” that imposing the death penalty will “help eliminate (my emphasis) the crime.” I want to cite this when I nominate the judge involved for the Nobel Peace prize! One of the apparent justifications for the death penalty cited in the trial court judgment is that the criminals came from Rajasthan, a good 2,000 km away – they came to “our state”, for committing robbery and murder! Obviously, along the way they did not find anyone to rob or murder! Hence, they deserved death penalty. Had they done the deeds in, say, Madhya Pradesh, they would have gotten away with a slap on the wrist.

You want more arbitrariness? The judgment by the trail court is purely judge-centric and not crime-centric. That is, you live or die on the lottery of the choice of the judge who hears your case. It also takes recourse to the barbaric jurisprudence of the Arab countries – “’slashing’, beheading, taking organ for organ” etc. Why no reference to, say, Norway’s liberal jurisprudence? Arbitrariness.

One last observation: one of the convicts died waiting for the High Court to disposes of an appeal. The other, after a tortuous judicial journey, was let go by the Supreme Court – from death to liberty. In the words of the Supreme Court Bench, “[W]e set him at liberty forthwith.”

It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “The only things certain in life are death and taxes.”  Now, given our judges misunderstanding of death sentence, the aphorism may have to be changed to “death and ‘Liberty’”.

I would like the death penalty proponents amongst my friends to tell me whether they will accept this modified saying

Raghuram Ekambaram