Supreme Court agrees to re-hear sentenced convicts, even after President’s refusal on mercy plea
Death row convicts too have the legal right to hear a detailed judgement on why they will be hanged. That will allow them to appeal. In a democratic system the judiciary needs to clearly spell out the reason for capital punishment being meted out to an accused.
This was acknowledged by the apex court on Thursday (June 22) when the vacation bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul agreed to hear an appeal by three prisoners on death row who wanted detailed, reasoned orders on their sentences.
The current practice is of summary proceedings, off which the order is often a one-liner, specifically three words: “Delay condoned. Dismissed.” That carries neither reasoning nor logic, and in 2004 itself there were at least nine such orders passed.
The issue about such orders is that it leaves the convicts with no grounds to appeal. The bench said the issue raised by the petitioners – Jeetu (24), Babu alias Ketan (30) and Sunny alias Devendra (27) – was “very important and serious” and should be examined. The plea would be examined by a three-judge bench in July.
It was the argument of senior advocate Salman Khurshid that swayed the judges. Khurshid argued that the court should frame guidelines to ensure that a detailed hearing was granted and the appeal of death row convicts was “not dismissed in limine (at the threshold)”.
Khurshid also said that original records of the trial court should be called and it should be provided to the lawyer defending the convict.
The three petitioners were at the receiving end of one such one-line order. They had challenged the Madhya Pradesh High Court death sentence in the Supreme Court, which dismissed it (in January 2015) with one such one-line order, leaving the petitioners no scope for petition or even argument.
The President too, went by the one-line order of the Supreme Court and rejected their mercy petition on May 25. The three are back at the door of the apex court with the hope that they would be heard and receive a detailed judgement.
—India Legal Bureau