SC:Life Imprisonment is the Rule and Death Penalty an Exception

The Supreme Court of India on 10 September 2013 held that life imprisonment is the rule and death penalty an exception. The apex court advised the courts to consider socio-economic compulsions such as poverty while awarding the extreme sentence to a convict.

The observations of the Supreme Court came in a judgement delivered by a bench of justices S.J.Mukhopadhaya and Kurian Joseph in which it commuted the death sentence into life imprisonment of a man who was convicted for killing his wife and two sons.

The court noted that the condemned convict had intended to wipe out the whole family including himself on account of abject poverty and these aspects were not considered by the courts below while awarding him death sentence. The appellant suffered from economic and psychic compulsions.