Death Penalty and justice delivery mechanism

With the recent judgements by Supreme Court over the commutation of death sentences of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts to life imprisonment, the debate around death penalty and its merits has once again been ignited. However, before jumping into the debate, it is worthwhile to take a step back and question the entire process of debating death penalty when in the first place, the justice delivery mechanism in the country is extremely time consuming and inefficient.

Discussion of the merits of death penalty means questioning the rationale of death penalty as a form of punishment for crimes. Death penalty, by its very nature, is expected to be prescribed for the gravest of crimes such as murder, acts of terrorism, etc. So, when we consider the merits of death penalty, we are questioning it even for supposedly grave crimes. The supporting points for death penalty are that it acts as a deterrent for similar crimes in future and it also provides a sense of retribution and justice for the victim and his kin and kith. But these supporting reasons have been countered through various studies across diverse countries which have shown that there is no consistent pattern which proves death penalty to be an effective deterrent of crime. As regards the other point related to providing justice for the victim and his near ones, it can be argued that in a civilized world, punishment in the form of life imprisonment should be enough to serve the purpose.
However, these discussions on the merits of death penalty overlook one fundamental aspect of the criminal justice system, which is the fact that the justice delivery mechanism in India and capital punishment work at cross-purposes. An inefficient and time-consuming justice delivery system, which is the norm in India, leads to the an attitude in the masses that even the gravest crimes, more often than not, don’t result in quick and sure punishment but rather a slow and decades-long criminal case in the courts that, in some cases, even leads to acquittal of the accused. This defeats the very purpose of deterring future crimes such as terrorist activities, murders, etc. and their perpetrators.
To bring about an efficient justice delivery system, there is a need for holistic reforms in the police system including registration of complaints, investigation capabilities, quality of prosecution, and trial procedures which do not lead to undue delay. Furthermore, the immense backlog of cases at all levels of judiciary need to be cleared expeditiously through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms like Lok Adalats, etc. The system of running courts in the evening on specified days of a month can also be experimented with.
But even when the justice delivery mechanism is not as efficient and expeditious as we would have liked it to be, the national debate on merits of death penalty must go on, finally leading to its abolition. This is because death penalty has not been proven to be an effective deterrent to crime. Additionally, the jurisprudence in India regarding death penalty, which mandates that it should be awarded in the “rarest of the rare” cases, is as inconsistent as it is confounding in most cases. In 2012, 14 retired judges of the Supreme Court wrote a letter asking for commutation of 13 death sentences after admitting that the original sentence was handed down per incuriam. Hence, there is always a chance of an innocent person or a person deserving maximum life sentence being awarded capital punishment.
Thus along with making our criminal justice system efficient and expeditious, which would also act as a deterrent to crime, the discussion on merits of death penalty must continue parallely and it should be abolished in the country.