A new lease of life under the sun, Pg7

Key Highlights:

• The Supreme Court has acquitted a significant number of death-row prisoners in recent years, highlighting concerns about investigative lapses and evidentiary issues.
• Rakesh, Krishna, and Manoj were wrongly accused and sentenced to death but later acquitted after spending years in prison.
• The Supreme Court has not confirmed a single death sentence for the third consecutive year.
• The wrongly accused individuals faced severe hardships, including family separation, loss of livelihood, and social stigma.
• The article highlights the need for police reforms, better legal aid, and a compensation mechanism for wrongful convictions.

Detailed Insights:

• The cases reveal a pattern of investigative failures, reliance on weak evidence, and inadequate legal representation for marginalized individuals.
• The Supreme Court has repeatedly flagged grave procedural violations in evidence collection, emphasizing the need for a more rigorous appellate scrutiny in death penalty cases.
• The lack of an investigative code and the failure to implement police reforms contribute to wrongful convictions, highlighting systemic issues within the criminal justice system.
• The absence of a statute recognizing the right to compensation for wrongful convictions leaves acquitted individuals without adequate support for rebuilding their lives.
• The mitigation process, which documents the life history of the accused, can offer a sense of validation and recognition of their humanity within the legal system.
• The article underscores the ethical challenges faced by mitigation investigators in balancing the need for disclosure with the privacy and distress of the accused and their families.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Mitigation: The process of gathering and presenting information about a defendant's background and life circumstances to a court for consideration during sentencing.
• Extra-Judicial Confession: A confession made by an accused to someone other than a law enforcement officer or a judge, often viewed with skepticism in court.
• Curative Jurisdiction: The power of the Supreme Court to correct its own errors in judgments, exercised in rare cases of grave injustice or procedural lapses.