State cannot take life against human dignity: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the State, even when authorised to take away life, cannot do so in a manner that is arbitrary, excessive or incompatible with human dignity.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said the method of execution must satisfy the constitutional requirements that it minimises suffering and preserves, to the greatest extent possible, the inherent dignity of the condemned. 

The bench made the observations while dismissing a petition seeking abolition of the practice of executing a death row convict by hanging and replacing it with methods such as intravenous lethal injection.
In its verdict, the top court said among all punishments permitted by the law, death penalty stands apart in its severity and finality. 

“When a court of law, upon due adjudication, imposes a sentence of death for a crime, the State, through its constitutional machinery, is called upon to carry out a punishment of the gravest nature, one that, once executed, is incapable of being undone,” it said.

The bench said if an error occurs, whether in the process or the proportionality of punishment, the consequences cannot be undone. “It is this final and irreversible character of death penalty that has placed it at the centre of continuing debate in constitutional law, criminal jurisprudence and moral philosophy, both in India and across jurisdictions,” it said, adding that legitimacy of the death penalty has been debated over centuries.
It said that in India, the question of legality of capital punishment has been examined through the prism of constitutional scrutiny, beginning with a decision of the top court that affirmed that death penalty did not violate the guarantees under Articles 14, 19, or 21 of the Constitution, provided it was imposed upon conclusion of a lawful trial with robust procedural safeguards.

The bench said in the pre-colonial period, the administration of criminal punishment across the country was neither uniform nor governed by any codified legal standard.  

It said while the Indian Penal Code, 1860, provided the legal authority to impose death penalty, it was the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1861, that first established ‘hanging by the neck’ as the sole method to carry it out.
“This selection was framed as a humanitarian reform of the era, utilising the long-drop technique. The method was premised on a clinical calculation of the condemned’s height and weight to ensure a fracture of the cervical vertebrae, purportedly resulting in instantaneous loss of consciousness and life,” it said.

The bench said the legal mechanism for execution remains unchanged across more than a century and a half of statutory progressions.

Referring to a Constitution bench verdict, the bench noted it had firmly established thatthe right to life includes the right to live with human dignity up to the end of natural life, which necessarily encompasses the right to die with dignity.
“This constitutional protection does not cease to exist at the gallows, it must apply with equal emphasis to prisoners who are on death row,” it said.

The bench said the issue before it was not one about the existence of the State’s power to impose capital punishment, which stands recognised in law, but the limits within which that power must operate. 
It said the exercise of such power is necessarily conditioned by constitutional  safeguards. 

“The State, even when authorised to take life, cannot do so in a manner that is arbitrary, excessive, or incompatible with human dignity,” it said.
The bench said when this petition was taken up for consideration in October 2017, the apex court had issued notice and observed that constitutional perspectives are not static and that the Constitution is a living and evolving instrument.

     It noted that the court had also called upon the Centre to explore whether more humane and less painful alternatives to execution by hanging could be considered. 

     The top court said in May 2023, it was informed that the Government was in the process of considering the constitution of an expert committee to examine the issues raised in this proceedings.
     “However, no further update has been provided regarding the constitution of any such committee. Even in the written submissions filed on behalf of the Union of India, there is no indication that any such committee has in fact been constituted,” the bench noted.    

     It said the petitioner had contended before it that under the Army Act, 1950, the Air Force Act, 1950 and the Navy Act, 1957, the sentence of death may be carried out either by hanging or by being shot to death.
     “We find the said argument to be irrelevant and unconvincing because the statutes in which shooting is provided as a mode of execution operate in a distinct field and govern a separate class of persons subject to military law,” the bench said.

     It said these instances cannot be relied upon to test the constitutional validity of the provisions governing the execution of a sentence of death imposed upon civilians under the ordinary criminal law.