The Supreme Court Wednesday commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty awarded to a man for hacking to death six members of a family in Kerala in 2001.
A bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur observed that the trial court, the Kerala High Court and also the apex court had overlooked the probability of the convict's reform and his social reintegration into the society while awarding him the capital punishment.
M A Antony was sentenced to death by a trial court in Ernakulam in January, 2005 for murdering six members of a family within three hours in the intervening night of January 6-7, 2001 due to a financial dispute.
The trial court's order was upheld by the high court in September 2006 after which the convict had approached the apex court.
The apex court had dismissed his appeal in April 2009 and subsequently, his plea seeking review of the judgement was also rejected in April, 2010.
However, his review petition was re-opened for consideration by the top court following a constitution bench verdict in which the apex court had held that appeals pending before it in death sentence cases be heard only by a bench of three-judges.
While commuting to life term the death sentence awarded to Antony, the court said the trial court and the high court should have taken into consideration his "socio-economic condition" while considering the punishment.
"While the socio-economic condition of a convict is not a factor for disproving his guilt, it is a factor that must be taken into consideration for the purposes of awarding an appropriate sentence to a convict," said the bench, also comprising Justices S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta.
Dealing with the aspect of rehabilitation of the convict, the bench said, "there is no meaningful discussion on why, if at all, the appellant could not be reformed or rehabilitated".
The top court also said the trial court had erred in proceeding on the basis that the convict was a hardened criminal as there was no such evidence on record.
Considering the socio-economic aspect of the convict, the bench said: "There is no doubt that the socio-economic factors relating to a convict should be taken into consideration for the purposes of deciding whether to award life sentence or death sentence.
"One of the reasons for this is the perception (perhaps misplaced) that it is only convicts belonging to the poor and disadvantaged sections of society that are awarded capital sentence while others are not".
The court noted in its judgement that quality legal aid to disadvantaged and weaker sections of society was an area that required great and urgent attention and "we hope that a vigorous beginning is made in this direction in the new year".
The bench said it did not think it necessary to consider the period of incarceration of the convict as a factor for deciding whether or not he should be awarded the death sentence.
"There are a number of cases where convicts have been on death row for more than six years and if a standard period was to be adopted, perhaps each and every person on death row might have to be given the benefit of commutation of death sentence to one of life imprisonment," it said.
"The long delays in courts must, of course, be taken into account, but what is needed is a systemic and systematic reform in criminal justice delivery rather than ad hoc or judge-centric decisions," the bench said.
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