Skip to main content arrow-down arrow-tail-right arrow-triangle-right calendar camera compass download email eye facebook flag mail phone pin play send square-right tag twitter youtube badge message

Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales

  • News
  • 18 Dec 2019

Article by Professor Carolyn Hoyle (Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford) and Saul Lehrfreund (Co-executive Director, The Death Penalty Project) published in the Asian Journal of Criminology.

This newly published article draws on two original empirical research projects that explore judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. ‘Matters of Judgment’ was conducted by Project 39A (National Law University, Delhi, India) and ‘The Death Penalty Regime in Bangladesh: Exploring Perspectives of Former Judges’ by Dr Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman of The Faculty of Law at the University of Dhaka (Bangladesh) for the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA). Both studies were undertaken in collaboration with the Death Penalty Project, in consultation with Professor Carolyn Hoyle (India and Bangladesh) and Dr. Mai Sato (India).

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and each has developed somewhat similarly since partition. However, while both countries now have relatively low murder rates, India has seen a decline in the rate of executions, while Bangladesh continues to impose death sentences and carry out executions at a higher rate. There have been legal challenges to the death penalty in India, restricting its use to exceptional cases. The same has not occurred in Bangladesh. Yet in both countries, systemic flaws in the criminal process are evident.

The data contained within these studies reveal justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process.

Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values.

Not only did the majority of judges interviewed express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.

The studies are the first of their kind in both jurisdictions – shedding new light on the administration of the law and pointing to a crisis within the Indian and Bangladeshi criminal justice systems.  A more detailed comparative report by Professor Carolyn Hoyle, providing a comprehensive analysis of each of these studies is forthcoming, and will be published by the Death Penalty Project in 2020.

Read the full article

Latest news

“Serious breach of procedural fairness” - excessive manslaughter sentence quashed in The Bahamas
Read More
Ghana Web: Alban Bagbin praised for repeal of death penalty
Read More
IBAHRI commends abolition of the death penalty - Ghana
Read More
CLA Statement: Commending the Zambian and Ghanaian Governments for Abolishing the Death Penalty
Read More
The Week: Ghana abolishes the death penalty
Read More
The Guardian: Ghana abolishes death penalty, with expected reprieve for 176 condemned prisoners
Read More
DPP INTERVIEW: Francis-Xavier Sosu, the Ghanaian MP whose private member’s Bills have abolished the death penalty in Ghana
Read More
DPP interview with TRT - "Why are executions on the rise in a number of countries?"
Read More
Jurist: Ghana Parliament votes to end death penalty
Read More
The Washington Post: Ghana votes to remove the death penalty, calling it sign of ‘inhumane’ society
Read More
NGO welcomes abolition of the Death Penalty in Ghana
Read More
BBC News: Ghana Parliament votes to abolish death penalty
Read More
PRESS RELEASE: A Huge Win for Human Rights - Ghana Abolishes the Death Penalty
Read More
Ghana abolishing death penalty is a huge win for human rights – DPP
Read More
THE CONVERSATION AFRICA: It’s time for Ghana to enshrine its respect for the right to life – by abolishing the death penalty
Read More
NEW Op-ed: It’s time for Ghana to enshrine its respect for right to life – by abolishing death penalty
Read More
“Another instance where the justice system has failed a person”: Privy Council recognises multiple failures in Jamaica’s appeal processes
Read More
CLA Support Death Penalty Abolition Advocacy in Ghana
Read More
VIDEO: Privy council quashes convictions after man spends 12 years in jail
Read More

Stay up-to-date with our work