The Supreme Court of India while upholding the constitutionality of the death penalty in Bachan Singh (1980) developed the ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine to guide sentencing judges and much of the scholarship since then has focused on ‘arbitrary outcomes’ in sentencing. This seminar, however, will evaluate the experience of administering the death penalty in the world’s largest constitutional democracy based on extensive interviews with India’s death row prisoners and their families. While discussing the multiple crisis points in India’s criminal justice system, the seminar will also examine the appropriate role for an equality analysis in death penalty sentencing.

This seminar is being co-hosted with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, and will take place at Mansfield College, in the Gilly Leventis Seminar Room, within the Institute and based at the new Hands Building (shown on the map as Love Lane building). Please report to the Lodge on arrival and ask for directions.