Forty-two years after Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, on 19 September 2022, the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India referred a matter dealing with issues of capital sentencing to a Constitution Bench. In a series of articles, we break down what the Court intends to do, and how it should approach those issues to improve the quality of capital sentencing in India.
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8 Min Read
Set in place by a 42-year-old Supreme Court judgement, Indian law requires judges to consider a convictâs life story and the probability of reform in deciding life imprisonment or a death sentence. That ruling has been largely violated, as a study of trial-court judgements makes clear, because the law is fuzzy. Is it really possible to ensure no one is unlawfully sentenced to death? A Supreme Court Constitution bench will have to figure that out.
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10 Min Read
On September 19th, 2022, a 3-judge bench of the Supreme Court referred certain issues of death penalty sentencing to a larger constitutional bench. One of these issues relates to the amount of time required to collect and present mitigation evidence at the stage of sentencing. This issue is particularly important because, as evidenced by Project 39A’s study, sentencing persons to death on the same day as their conviction is pervasive across trial courts.
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1 Min Read
In the backdrop of an alarming rate of executions in Singapore in 2022, Kirsten gives the listeners a first-hand account. The Podcast discusses the anti-drug trafficking law in Singapore, the 2012 amendment and its problematic implementation, discriminatory use of the death penalty, and hefty fines on death penalty lawyers.
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5 Min Read
The Supreme Court in a recent order referred issues relating to capital sentencing in India to a Constitution bench. Unlike the dominant Supreme Court jurisprudence that has articulated inconsistent application of the Bachan Singh framework as the problem with capital sentencing, the referral order, in a markedly distinct approach, recognises the underdeveloped nature of the law.
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3 Min Read
The imagination of legal representation in capital cases is limited to lawyers. Mitigation, however, needs to be conducted by individuals trained in social work, sociology or psychology.
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5 Min Read
The Supreme Court has done well to acknowledge that capital punishment needs closer scrutiny and referring the matter to a five-judge bench. The problem that the Supreme Courtâs reference to a Constitution Bench seeks to remedy is the need to achieve consistency on the requirements of a fair, meaningful and effective sentencing hearing
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10 Min Read
The SC does not allow standalone mental facts to trigger the exception under Section 27, but does not clearly explain why. This post argues that a possible reason is that mere mental facts do not guarantee the truthfulness or trustworthiness of information given by the accused, whereas the recovery of a physical object offers this guarantee.
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12 Min Read
The right to presumed innocence has not been given the status of a fundamental right in the Indian legal system. Yet, its status as a universal human right, crucial to the fairness of criminal trials, has been widely recognised in democratic legal systems.
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10 Min Read
One of the issues raised before the Court by the Petitioners was that the officers of the Enforcement Directorate [âEDâ] were âpolice officersâ, and thus bound by the rigours of Section 25 of the Evidence Act (inadmissibility of confessions before a police officer in evidence), as well as Chapter XII of the Code of Criminal Procedure [âCrPC”].
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1 Min Read
Apart from the specific concerns the Supreme Court’s recent judgment on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 raises, there are broader issues raised by this decision which need to be addressed. What is the purpose of having special laws like PMLA in the first place? Are these purposes served by the current framework? Maneka Khanna gets in conversation with Shri Singh to explore these questions.
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9 Min Read
By stating that sex workersâ right to dignity is protected under Article 21 irrespective of their occupation, the Court has made the ITPA subject to the mandates of constitutional morality.
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2 Min Read
Are provisions of the PMLA violative of Article 20(3) of the Constitution? Aditya Mehta talks to Aabad Ponda, Senior Advocate, who argued before the Supreme Court concerning this specific issue.Â
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2 Min Read
The recent dismissal of the challenges to the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 has given grounds for much criticism. Irrespective of the controversy surrounding the judgment, it stands to be the law on the question of money laundering for now. In this conversation between Harsh Srivastava and Arshdeep Singh Khurana, we take a detour from the critique and address how the judgment may be used as part of a defence strategy in money-laundering cases.
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1 Min Read
What went wrong in the Supreme Courtâs recent decision concerning the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002? Was it a faulty interpretation of the provisions of the Act? A misplaced application of precedent? A general lack of clarity concerning the principles at play? Shivani Misra of Project 39A speaks to Senior Advocate Aman Lekhi on what the Supreme Court could have done differently while balancing the rights of the individual against the Stateâs power.
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1 Min Read
In light of the Supreme Court quashing the Delhi High Court judgement disallowing the termination of pregnancy after 24 weeks; Anupriya Dhonchak speaks to Dr. Aparna Chandra about the undue barriers that hinder access to safe abortion in India.
In the backdrop of the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, this conversation considers the impact of paternalistic state policies in undermining the bodily integrity and personal autonomy of women, and argues for locating the right to abortion within the framework of substantive equality.
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10 Min Read
In upholding the validity of Indiaâs money laundering law, the Supreme Court on 27 July 2022, created a new normal in the countryâs justice system, overturning the basic principles of criminal law, deferring to Parliament and the government and subverting its own powers of independent judicial review.
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5 Min Read
The judgement in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India has created a situation where the State can arrest anyone without telling them precisely what crime they are supposed to have committed and where no court will be able to release them for an extended period. Differently put, history has repeated itself, and we have arrived back at ADM Jabalpur.
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22 Min Read
On 27 July 2022, the Supreme Court of India in Vijay Madanal Choudhary v Union of India, upheld the validity of various provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (âthe Actâ). Here is a summary of the findings and reasoning of the Court on key provisions of the Act.
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3 Min Read
On 27 July 2022, the three-judge bench headed by J. Khanwilkar upheld the constitutional validity of various provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. Through a series of articles and podcasts, we explain and explore the fallout of the judgment for money-laundering trials across the country as well as the criminal justice system at large.