JOIN USThe Supreme Court has made an important contribution to the jurisprudence on death sentence by ruling that convicts with serious mental illness that developed during their incarceration should not be executed. It has laid down that post-conviction mental illness, resulting in impairment of the convict’s cognitive faculties, will henceforth be a mitigating factor in deciding pleas for commutation of the death penalty. The ruling was given in a petition for a prisoner who had been on the death row for 17 years for rape and murder. It is a humane judgement which has narrowed the scope for capital punishment, and even strong supporters of death sentence would find it difficult to fault it. It is also important for its views on mental illness and how it should be handled in prisons.
The court’s reasoning is self-evident. Punishments, especially those like the death penalty, can serve as a deterrent only if the implications of the sentence are made abundantly clear to those who receive the sentence. The death penalty would lose its meaning and whatever intended effect it has if a convict is unable to comprehend the severity of the punishment. Natural justice demands that the reason for the punishment and its severity should be conveyed to the prisoner, and this is not possible in the case of a convict who is in no condition to comprehend either the crime or the rules of punishment. It actually amounts to putting to death a person different from the one who committed the crime. There is in this, in a limited way, even a questioning of the idea of deterrence, which is always cited as the main justification for the death penalty. Death penalty has not acted as a deterrent against crimes. This is being increasingly realised all over the world, and India too, like most other countries, should scrap it or suspend its operation in all cases. An enlightened view of justice has no place for retribution in it. It should give opportunities for reform even to those who commit the worst crimes.
The court has given some guidelines on how the petitions for those who suffer from severe mental illnesses have to be considered. They include assessment of the disability to be conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of qualified professionals. The judgement also has pointed out the poor state of healthcare in prisons and directed that state prisons should set up a mental health establishment in the medical wing of at least one prison in each state and union territory. The court has reminded the State that it is the parens patriae (protector) of every mentally ill prisoner. The judgement flows from this idea.