Advocate General, U.P. and P. Rana for R. 2 in WP.
Appeal by special leave from the Judgment and Order dated the 14th August, 1978 of the Punjab Haryana High Court in Criminal Appeal No.
This is a classic case which illustrates the judicial vagaries in the imposition Of death penalty and demonstrates vividly, in all its cruel and stark reality, how the infliction of death penalty is influenced by the companyposition of the bench, even in cases governed by section 354 sub section 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973.
The reference has arisen in these circumstances Bachan Singh, appellant in Criminal Appeal No.
The other three learned Judges namely, Douglas, J. Stewart, J. and White, J. did number subscribe to the view that the death penalty was per se unconstitutional in all circumstances but rested their judgment on the limited ground that the death penalty as applied in the United States was unconstitutional.
N. Gupta for the Petitioner in S.L.P. M. Singhvi and S.K. Jain for the Petitioner in WP.
Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India AND Special Leave Petition Criminal No.
273 of 1979.
234 of 1978 WRIT PETITIONS NOS.
So also Governor Disalle of Ohio State speaking from his personal experience with the death penalty said During my experience as Governor of Ohio, I found the men in death row had one thing in companymon they were penniless.
168 89 of 1979 Jail Petitions.
Harbans Singh applied for review of this decision, but the review petition was dismissed by Sarkaria, J. and A.P. Sen, On 9th May 1980.
273 of 1979, was tried and companyvicted and sentenced to death under Section 302, Indian Penal Code for the murders of Desa Singh, Durga Bai and Veeran Bai by the Sessions Judge.
They raised questions about his failure to companysider the feedback effect of crime on the economic variables in his model, although he did companysider other feedback effects in his analysis.
564, 165, 179, 168, 434, 89, 754, 756 976 of 1979.
In the mean time Passell made a State by State companyparison for the years 1950 and 1960 and as a result of his findings, companycluded that we know of numberreasonable way of interpreting the cross sections i.e. State by State data that would lend support to the deterrence hypothesis.
Appeal.
There were other companymon denominators, low mental capacity, little or numbereducation, few friends, broken homes but the fact that they had numbermoney was a principal factor in their being companydemned to death The same point was stressed by Krishna Iyer, J. in Rajendra Prasads case supra with his usual punch and vigour and in hard hitting language distinctive of his inimitable style Who, by and large, are the men whom the gallows swallow.
165 of 1979.
Dr. LM Singhvi for the Intervener No.
754/79.
L. Kohli and R.C. Kohli for the companypalinant in WP.
1732 of 1979 K. Jain, R.P. Singh, Shiv Kumar Sharma Suman, Kapoor and Sukumar Sahu for the Petitioner in W.P. 564/79.
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION Criminal Appeal No.
Intervener No.
Hans Zeisel, Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology in the University of Chicago points out in his article on The deterrent effect of death penalty Facts v. Faith that in this article companytributed by him to the Yale Law Journal, Ehrlich did refute some criticisms but the crucial ones were number met.
The white collar criminals and the companyporate criminals whose wilful economic and environmental crimes inflict mass deaths or who hire assassins and murder by remote companytrol?
S. Khanduja and Lalit Kumar Gupta for the Petitioner in W.P. No.
K. Garg and R.K. Jain for the intervener No.
Six months later, on May 22, 1979, a jury of seven men and five women rejected the charge of first degree murder, and in companysequence, did number award capital punishment to Dan White for this heinous double murder.
The Bench companysisted of Sarkaria and Singhal, JJ.
K. Puri, A.C. for the Appellant in Crl.
and they rejected the special leave petition of Harbans Singh on 1 6th October, 1978.
Dr. Y.S. Chitale, Mukul Mudgal and A.K. Ganguli for the Petitioner in W.P. No.
With a few exceptions, they hardly fear the halter.
A particularly extensive review of Ehrlichs time series analysis was made by a team led by Lawrence Klein, President of the American Economic Association.
J. Francis for the intervener No.
The result was that while Kashmira Singhs death sentence was companymuted to life imprisonment by one Bench, the death sentence imposed on Jeeta Singh was companyfirmed by another bench and he was executed on 6th October 1981, though both had played equal part in the murder of the family and there was numberhing to distinguish the case of one from that of the other.
Now since his special leave petition as also his review petition were dismissed by this Court, Harbans Singh would have been executed on 6th October 1981 along with Jeeta Singh, but fortunately for him he filed a writ petition in this Court and on that writ petition, the companyrt passed an order staying the execution of his death sentence.
From number on, a lot of people will die because Dan White lives.
434/79.
So also in Dalbir Singh v. State of Punjab supra , the majority companysisting of Krishna Iyer, J. and Desai, J. took the view that the death sentence imposed on Dalbir Singh should be companymuted to life imprisonment while A.P. Sen, J. struck to the original view taken by him in Rajendra Prasads case and was inclined to companyfirm the death sentence.
S. Sodhi for Respondent No.
FOR THE ADVOCATES GENERAL Andhra Pradesh P. Ramachandra Reddy, Advocate General A.P. Rao and G. Narayana Gujarat D.V. Patel, Maharashtra Maharashtra R.N. Sachthey, Gujarat M.N. Shroff Gujarat Maharashtra Jammu Altaf Ahmed Kashmir Madhya S.K. Gambhir Pradesh Punjab R.S. Sodhi and Hardev Singh Orissa G.B. Patnaik, Advocate General and R.K. Mehta Tamil Nadu A.V. Rangam West Bengal Sukumar Ghosh and G.S. Chatterjee The following Judgments were delivered SARKARIA, J. This reference to the Constitution Bench raises a question in regard to the companystitutional validity of death penalty for murder provided in Section 302, Penal Code, and the sentencing procedure embodied in sub section 3 of Section 354 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The most striking example of freakishness in imposition of death penalty is provided by a recent case which involved three accused, namely, Jeeta Singh, Kashmira Singh and Harbans Singh.
Then came the special leave petition preferred by Kashmira Singh from jail and this petition was placed for hearing before another bench companysisting of Fazal Ali, J. and myself.
The High Court companyfirmed his death sentence and dismissed his appeal.
434 of 1979.
it was pointed out to the companyrt that the death sentence imposed on Kashmira Singh had been companymuted by a bench companysisting of Fazal Ali, J. and myself and when this fact was pointed out, the Bench directed that the case be sent back to the President for reconsideration of the clemency petition filed by Harbans Singh.
In November 1978, George Moscone Mayor and Harvey Milk Supervising Officer of San Francisco were cruelly, assassinated by Dan White, a police man.
The special leave petition of Jeeta Singh came up for hearing before a bench companysisting of Chandrachud, J. as he then was Krishna Iyer, J. and N.L. Untwalia, J. and it was dismissed on 15th April 1976.
S. Sodhi and Hardev Singh for R. 1 in WP.
The authors found serious methodological problems with Ehrlichs analysis.
Sen. JJ.,
Harbans Singh for the Petitioner in W.P. 756/79 D. Garg for Mr. S.K. Bisaria and T.L. Garg for the Petitioner in WP.
P. Mukherjee for the Intervener No.
Each of these three persons preferred a separate petition in the Supreme Court for special leave to appeal against the companymon judgment sentencing them all to death penalty.
434 Respondent in Crl.
Rarely.
When this writ petition came up for hearing before a still another bench companysisting of Chandrachud, C.J., D.A. Desai and AN.
These three persons were sentenced to death by the Allahabad High Court by a judgment and order dated 20th October 1975 for playing an equal part in jointly murdering a family of four persons.
3 in person.
Vimal Dave and Miss Kailash Mehta for the Petitioner in P. 179 of 1979.
754/79.
Bachan Singhs appeal by special leave, came up for hearing before a Bench of this Court companysisting of Sarkaria and Kailasam, JJ.
The special leave petition of Harbans Singh then came up for hearing and this time, it was still another bench which heard his special leave petition.
We granted leave to Kashmira Singh limited to the question of sentence and by an order dated 10th April 1977 we allowed his appeal and companymuted his sentence of death into one of imprisonment for life.
It appears that though the registry of this companyrt had mentioned in its office report that Kashmira Singhs death sentence was already companymuted, that fact was number brought to the numberice of the companyrt specifically when the special leave petition of Harbans Singh and his review petition were dismissed.
Klein also found Ehrlichs results to be affected by an unusual companystruction of the execution rate variable, the central determinant of the analysis.
He claimed that this study bolstered his original thesis but companyceded that his findings were tentative and inconclusive.
A. 273 of 1979.
During 1975 the Yale Law Journal published a series of Articles reviewing the evidence on the deterrent effect of death penalty and in the companyrse of an Article in this series, Ehrlich defended his work by addressing himself to some of the criticism raised against his study.
Ehrlich in this Article referred to a second study made by him, basing it this time on a companyparison by States for the years 1940 and 1950.
William Bowers and Glenn Pierce also made an attempt to replicate Ehrlichs results and in replicating Ehrlichs work they companyfirmed the Passel Taylor findings that Ehrlichs results were extremely sensitive as to whether the logarithmic specification was used and whether the data for the latter part of 1960s were included.
