India | In most death penalty cases, court invoked ‘collective conscience’ of society, no mitigating circumstances considered: Study
This was also true of 42% of cases in Madhya Pradesh and 51% of cases in Maharashtra during the same period, according to the study. Seventy-two per cent of all cases in which Delhi trial courts awarded the death penalty from 2000 to 2015 cited “collective conscience of the society” as an influencing factor, a study by Project 39A, a criminal reforms advocacy group, has found. This was also true of 42% of cases in Madhya Pradesh and 51% of cases in Maharashtra during the same period, according to the study. The team led by Dr Anup Surendranath, Executive Director of Project 39A and Assistant Professor of Law at NLU, Delhi, looked at 215 trial court judgments from Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to study the award of death sentences by trial courts. The three states were chosen for the study since they rank high on the list of states awarding capital punishment and a large number of decisions in capital cases were overturned at the appellate level — in the High ...