Death Penalty News

The trial judge failed to take into account that the convict’s lack of means to engage a counsel constitutes a mitigating factor and ought to have been considered while sentencing.  The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently commuted the death penalty imposed on a Tirunelveli man, who sexually assaulted and impregnated his 14-year-old daughter, to life imprisonment till the remainder of his natural life.

On 13 April 2026, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court stayed a death sentence awarded to three convicts in a case from Dakshina Kannada. A trial court had convicted them and sentenced them to death in October 2024 for rape and murder under the penal code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 . A death sentence awarded by a trial court is not executable until it is confirmed by a High Court. On 6 February 2026, a Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court confirmed the trial court’s decision. The Supreme Court left the conviction of the appellants untouched and reopened the sentencing question on two grounds: the High Court loosely engaged with the mitigation question in a single paragraph, and a third form of punishment—viewed as an alternative between ordinary life imprisonment and death penalty—was unconsidered.

Upholding a 2007 trial court judgement of life imprisonment for four convicts accused of rape and murder of a minor, the Calcutta High Court on Monday ruled that death penalty can only be imposed in "rarest of rare cases" when the opportunity of rehabilitation and reformation of a convict has been ruled out. The court said mere gravity and heinousness of the crime cannot be the only criterion for a death sentence." Judges should never be bloodthirsty ...life sentence is the rule and death sentence is an exception," the court stated. 

Meeting the standard of ‘rarest of rare’ for the award of the death penalty requires courts to conclude that the convict is not fit for any kind of reformatory and rehabilitation scheme, and does not have to do only with the grave nature of the offence, held a three-judge bench of the court led by the Chief Justice of India. IN a significant order, the Supreme Court has held that a death sentence cannot be imposed upon a convict merely on account of the grave nature of the crime, but only if there is no possibility of reformation in a criminal.  It said multiple previous judgments by it have highlighted that it is the duty of the court to enquire into mitigating circumstances as well as to foreclose the possibility of reformation and rehabilitation before imposing the death penalty. “Despite this, in the present case, no such enquiry was conducted and the grievous nature of the crime was the only factor that was considered while awarding the death penalty,” the court said.

Kate Brown has granted more commutations or pardons than all of Oregon’s governor from the last 50 years combined Last October, Kate Brown, the governor of Oregon, signed an executive order granting clemency to 73 people who had committed crimes as juveniles, clearing a path for them to apply for parole. The move marked the high point in a remarkable arc: as Brown approaches the end of her 2nd term in January, she has granted commutations or pardons to 1,147 people – more than all of Oregon’s governors from the last 50 years combined. The story of clemency in Oregon is one of major societal developments colliding: the pressure the Covid-19 pandemic put on the prison system and growing momentum for criminal justice reform. It’s also a story of a governor’s personal convictions and how she came to embrace clemency as a tool for criminal justice reform and as an act of grace, exercising the belief that compassionate mercy and ensuring public safety are not mutually exclusive. “If you are ...

The government’s recent decision to abolish the mandatory death penalty is indeed a step in the right direction toward completely abolishing the death penalty. The death penalty will still exist in our system as it would be still available for certain offences subject to the discretion of the courts. This move, however, would probably result in a significant reduction in executions in future. Most executions worldwide take place in Asia. A survey conducted by the Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs seems to indicate that more than 80 percent of Singaporean believe that the death penalty should be retained for certain offences. This is an indication that many still believe in capital punishment. In contrast, European countries, apart from Russia and Belarus, have completely abolished the death penalty. In fact, this is a precondition for countries entering the European Union, and it is also a key objective for the union’s human rights policy. For supporters of capital punishment, deter...

The Supreme Court observed that the death sentences are most often imposed by the trial courts in a retributive to ensure that the circumstances of the accused should be considered while the case is at trial stage.  The Apex court has thus, talked of the practical guidelines to ensure that the mitigating circumstances of then accused are properly considered . The Court in it finding says that it is only at the appellate stage in most of the cases, that the information relating to the mitigating circumstances are collected which only relate to the post-conviction circumstances. The Court spoke about the absence of well documented mitigating circumstances at trial level can aggravates circumstances lead to imposing the death penalty, on the basis of an incomplete test. A bench comprising of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice Bela M Trivedi said that there seems to be no “concrete framework” to measure and evaluate the possibility of reformation. Justice Bha...

Death penalty should be resorted to by courts only if the crime is an “uncommon” one, the Supreme Court has held. No mitigating circumstances of the convict should should be able to overcome the aggravation or, for one, the brutality of the crime, the court explained. The crime should be of a nature that leaves the court with the opinion that life sentence would be inadequate. “All murders are inhuman. For imposing capital sentence, the crime must be uncommon in nature, where even after taking into account the mitigating circumstances the Court must be of the opinion that the sentence of imprisonment for life is inadequate and there is no alternative but to impose death sentence,” a three-judge Bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar observed in a recent judgment. The case was the “heinous and brutal” rape and murder of an 8-year-old by her uncle. The court commuted the death penalty of the convict to life sentence with no remission for 30 years of the i...

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen will no longer pursue the death penalty, needlessly compound charges and prosecute minor crimes as part of a slew of reforms he unveiled Wednesday. Instead, Rosen said, his office will pursue sentencing alternatives to incarceration, refrain from requesting fines and fees from low-income defendants, work to end cash bail in the state and automatically expunge records of those who complete probation. Rosen’s office handles upwards of 30,000 cases each year. The sweeping reforms are a progressive shift for the traditionally tough-on-crime DA, and illustrate a growing trend nationally toward criminal justice reform. The county’s top prosecutor said the changes are in response to public pressure to address race and equity, increase police accountability and provide more community rehabilitation – demands that have ramped up in the months following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Rosen said he hopes the reforms str...

The Bombay High Court had confirmed the death sentence in June 2006 against which Borkar approached the Supreme Court. His counsel told the apex court that he had realised his mistake. THE SUPREME Court has commuted the death sentence of a man — convicted of killing a child for ransom — to life imprisonment, relying among others on poems that he wrote in jail to conclude that he “would not be a continuing threat to society”. A bench of Justices A K Sikri, S Abdul Nazeer and M R Shah, which perused the file of Dnyaneshwar Suresh Borkar, held that capital punishment was not warranted in the facts and circumstances of the case as “mitigating circumstances are in favour of the accused”. These “mitigating circumstances”, the court said, were that at the time of commission of the offence, he was 22, that he had already spent 18 years in jail, his good conduct in jail and that he had tried to join society and become a civilised man and completed his BA while in prison. The ...