Delay in deciding mercy plea of death row convicts valid ground for commuting death penalty to life imprisonment: SC

In a landmark judgment today, the Supreme Court held that unexplained and inordinate delay in deciding mercy plea of death row convicts will be a valid ground for commutation of their death penalty to life imprisonment. In the process the Court declared its own judgment in Devender Pal Bhullar as per incuriam and granted relief to 15 petitioners including 4 aides of Veerappan. The judgment was delivered in a batch of 13 petitions filed by different convicts seeking commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment..It was delivered by a 3-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Shiva Kirti Singh..Senior Advocates Ram Jethmalani, Anand Grover, R Basant, Colin Gonsalves and Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhary appeared for the petitioners while Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran, Additional Solicitor Generals L Nageshwar Rao and Siddharth Luthra and Advocate General VC Mishra represented the respondents. Senior Counsel TR Andhyarujina assisted the Court as amicus curiae..In a pronouncement which lasted 35 minutes, the Court held that,.“Keeping a convict in suspense while consideration of his mercy petition by the President for many years is certainly an agony for him/her. It creates adverse physical conditions and psychological stresses on the convict under sentence of death…..if there is undue, unexplained and inordinate delay in execution due to pendency of mercy petitions or the executive as well as the constitutional authorities have failed to take note of/consider the relevant aspects, this Court is well within its powers under Article 32 to hear the grievance of the convict and commute the death sentence into life imprisonment on this ground alone however, only after satisfying that the delay was not caused at the instance of the accused himself….However, this Court will only examine the circumstances surrounding the delay that has occurred and those that have ensued after sentence was finally confirmed by the judicial process. This Court cannot reopen the conclusion already reached but may consider the question of inordinate delay to decide whether the execution of sentence should be carried out or should be altered into imprisonment for life.”.Relying on the judgment in Triveniben’s case, the Court ruled that delay in execution of death sentence was a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution and held that,.“we are of the cogent view that undue, inordinate and unreasonable delay in execution of death sentence does certainly attribute to torture which indeed is in violation of Article 21 and thereby entails as the ground for commutation of sentence. However, the nature of delay i.e. whether it is undue or unreasonable must be appreciated based on the facts of individual cases and no exhaustive guidelines can be framed in this regard.We are of the view that unexplained delay is one of the grounds for commutation of sentence of death into life imprisonment and the said supervening circumstance is applicable to all types of cases including the offences under TADA…..The argument of Mr. Luthra, learned ASG that a distinction can be drawn between IPC and non-IPC offences since the nature of the offence is a relevant factor is liable to be rejected at the outset.”.Besides delay in deciding mercy plea, the court also held insanity and Schizophrenia as valid ground for commutation of death sentence. However, the Court turned down solitary confinement and reliance by trial court and High Court on judgments rendered per incuriam as supervening circumstances warranting its interference for commutation of death penalty..The Court also framed guidelines to be followed by prisons across the country. This includes provision for legal aid for convicts, proper communication of rejection of mercy plea by President/Governor to the convict, execution within 14 days of rejection of mercy plea and compulsory postmortem after execution..You can read the judgment below..Shatrughan Chauhan & Anr. v. Union of India & Ors.