Punishment is a term having many subjective meanings. Punishment for one person may be a pleasure for another person. Etymologically, the term punishment may be understood as a process of inflicting pain upon someone who has done something not considered right by the society. Though punishment is subjective and society-centric, the term ‘capital punishment’ has an identical meaning across societies. It is the extreme level of punishment existing in any legal system, viz., ending the life of the offender and is consequently called ‘the death sentence’.
There are various theories of punishment: retributive, deterrent, preventive, reformative, and compensatory/expiatory. Insofar capital punishment is concerned, it corresponds the most to the retributive theory of punishment. Some supporters believe that the death penalty is a just punishment for heinous crimes like murder, ensuring that the punishment matches the crime. The theory is also supported on the ground that is helps in creating deterrence in the society and prevents the potential offenders from committing heinous crimes.
The capital punishment and the retributive theory have more critics than supporters. The theory is based on vengeance, and there is no place for vengeance in modern criminal jurisprudence. “An eye for an eye, will turn the whole world blind”. The maxim opposes the idea of capital punishment. Countries like France, Italy and Australia have abolished the death sentence, terming it inhuman and unfit for the present society. In India, the debate over keeping or abolishing the death sentence is not new. There have been instances where the constitutionality and legality of capital punishment was challenged before the Courts. The debate was rested by the Supreme Court of India in the case of Bachan Singh versus State of Punjab where the doctrine of ‘rarest of the rare’ was propounded and the applicability of the death sentence was narrowed-down considerably to extremely heinous crimes.
Though capital punishment does not correspond to the modern criminal jurisprudence, yet, it is a necessary evil. It is undoubtedly true that there is no place of vengeance in justice delivery system. But, what is equally true is the existence of crimes like terrorism and the infamous 2012 Delhi gang-rape case. Death sentence should not be the rule but an exception. It should not be granted as a casual punishment but where the situation is such that nothing less than the capital punishment would be proportional to the crime, the awarding of death sentence is not only justified but also needed. Consequently, it may be concluded that the stance given by the Supreme Court of India of neither abolishing the capital punishment nor allowing its casual use is a well-balanced step in the right direction.