Why most death sentences in India do not survive appeal

Hanumangarh, Rajasthan: Eight years after a crime that later led to a death sentence, the Supreme Court has acquitted a young man from Chennai convicted of the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl.

A trial court in Chengalpattu had sentenced him to death in 2018, a verdict later upheld by the Madras High Court. Earlier this month, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court overturned both judgments, citing serious gaps in the prosecution’s case.

For many, the decision was difficult to come to terms with. How could a person found guilty of one of the gravest crimes by two courts be acquitted years later?

“This question keeps returning again and again,” said Archana Godara, a sociologist at NM Government College in Hanumangarh. “When someone is sentenced to death for a crime that society sees as unforgivable, and is later acquitted, it creates anxiety and anger. People feel the system has failed them.”

Godara added that such outcomes weaken public confidence. “There is a fear that criminals will believe they can escape punishment,” she said. “That the law will eventually let them go.”

But within the judiciary and among legal researchers, the Chennai acquittal is not seen as an aberration. Instead, it reflects a pattern that has been steadily emerging across India’s courts: death sentences awarded at the trial level frequently collapse when subjected to closer scrutiny on appeal.

Data compiled by Project 39A, a criminal justice research group at National Law University Delhi, illustrates this. Between 2016 and 2024, trial courts across India awarded 1,180 death sentences. Appellate courts ultimately confirmed only 95 of them. The rest were either commuted to life imprisonment or ended in acquittals.

The trend has become even sharper in recent years. In the first seven months of 2025, the Supreme Court heard 14 appeals arising from death sentences. In seven cases—half of them—it ordered complete acquittal. This is the highest proportion of death sentence acquittals recorded in a single year in recent history. Of the remaining cases, four death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.

The Supreme Court has so far set aside the death penalty in nearly three out of every four cases it has heard this year.

Recent examples explaining this trend are: In September last year, the Supreme Court acquitted a man sentenced to death in a 2014 rape and murder case involving a seven-year-old girl in Uttarakhand, overturning both the trial court’s verdict and the High Court’s confirmation. That same month, the Rajasthan High Court acquitted Arjun Singh, who had been sentenced to death by a POCSO court in Pali for the murder of two siblings and the rape of their sister.

‘Conviction-driven’ mindset

Former Acting Vice-Chancellor of Maharaja Ganga Singh University and senior law teacher Professor Vimlendu Tayal describes a growing “conviction-driven” tendency at the trial court level.

“Local outrage, media attention, and the pressure to deliver justice quickly often push trial courts towards conviction rather than caution,” Tayal said. “The focus shifts from whether the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt to whether the court has responded strongly enough.”

He added that inadequate training and overwhelming workloads worsen the problem. “Thousands of cases are listed before district judges. In such circumstances, it becomes difficult to examine every piece of evidence with the depth that capital punishment demands.”

Former Rajasthan High Court judge Justice Gopal Krishna Vyas echoed this concern, emphasising that human emotion is inseparable from judging, particularly at the trial level.

“A judge is a human being,” he said. “When a crime involves a Victim child or extreme violence, emotions do play a role. But the law is clear: death penalty must be reserved for the rarest of rare cases. Even a small doubt must tilt the balance in favour of life.”

Vyas explained that in cases based on circumstantial evidence, the standard is especially exacting. “The entire chain of evidence must be complete…link to link. If even one link breaks, the case collapses. Many death sentences do not survive appeal because this standard was not met.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that capital punishment must remain exceptional. The doctrine of “rarest of rare” was articulated in the 1980 Bachan Singh judgment and reaffirmed over decades. More recently, in Manoj vs State of Madhya Pradesh (2022), the court went further, directing trial courts to examine the accused’s life history, conduct and possibility of reform before awarding death.

Yet compliance remains limited.

According to Project 39A’s Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics 2024, lower courts have followed the Manoj guidelines in only 7% of death penalty cases since the judgment.

“The law has evolved,” said Tayal. “But practice has not kept pace.”

Living on death row

While acquittals draw public attention, the years preceding them often remain invisible.

According to Project 39A’s Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics 2023, by the end of 2023, 561 prisoners were on death row—the highest number recorded at any year-end in the past two decades. Since 2015, India’s death row population has increased by 45.71%.

In 2023, the Supreme Court did not uphold a single death sentence—only the second time this has happened since 2000, after 2021. At the High Court level, only the Karnataka High Court upheld one death sentence, in a simple murder case. Everywhere else, death sentences were either commuted or overturned.

The National Crime Records Bureau data corroborates this, showing that the figure of 561 death-row prisoners is the highest recorded for the second time since the beginning of this century.

Most of these prisoners will never be executed. According to Lakshmi Menon, Associate at The Squire Circle, NALSAR’s criminal justice initiative, most death sentences in India are eventually converted to life imprisonment—a process that can take many years.

But the time spent awaiting that outcome carries its own punishment.

Once a death sentence is pronounced, even at the trial stage, many prisoners are placed in separate confinement. Prison conditions vary widely across states. Some jails isolate death-row prisoners completely; others house them with the general population. Funding for food, hygiene and healthcare is often minimal. Mental health support is rare.

Women facing death sentences fare worse, with their specific needs frequently ignored.

Distance compounds the suffering. Many prisons are located far from prisoners’ homes. Travel costs and bureaucratic hurdles reduce visits or make them impossible. Relationships weaken, sometimes irreparably.

By the time an acquittal arrives, the accused may have already lost a decade—or more—of ordinary life.

Why higher courts overturn death sentences

Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court Rajendra Singhvi said, “In many cases, the investigation is weak. Forensic evidence is incomplete, digital proof is mishandled, and the crime scene is poorly documented. Public prosecutors are overburdened and underpaid. The system does not give them the resources needed for capital cases.”

Singhvi added that institutional capacity and training also play a critical role. “New judicial officers often lack exposure to complex criminal trials. There are fewer public prosecutors and more cases. In Rajasthan High Court, there isn’t even one judge per ten-lakh population. Meanwhile, High Courts and the Supreme Court have more time, research support and legal assistance. That difference matters.”

Former District and Sessions Judge Surendra Mohan Sharma pointed to subtler, human pressures that shape decision-making at the trial level.

“There is no haste in giving decisions in lower courts, but judges also consider the social environment of that area, general expectations and sensitivity. Suppose an incident happens with a minor girl, people around expect strict action from the court. A judge also has a family, he thinks about his safety and social standing. Such human aspects sometimes make decision-making harsher.”

Sharma added that judicial perspective evolves with time and institutional position. “A judge’s mature perspective also changes. When the matter goes to the High Court or Supreme Court, judges there have more time, better resources and legal assistance, they can deliberate deeply on technical and evidence-related points. That is why decisions are overturned. One reason for decisions being overturned is also time…appeals drag on…five to ten years or more.”

Appeals, by contrast, unfold in a very different environment.

Former Rajasthan High Court judge Justice Gopal Krishna Vyas explained that appellate courts are designed precisely for this purpose. “Their role is not to repeat the trial, but to test it,” he said. “Was evidence ignored? Was it misunderstood? Were legal principles applied correctly?”

Vyas outlined how appellate scrutiny works in practice. In High Courts, murder and life imprisonment cases are heard by two-judge benches. If the judges disagree, the matter is referred to a third judge, and the majority view prevails. In the Supreme Court, death sentence appeals are heard by three judges.

“The benefit of doubt is fundamental,” Vyas said. “If doubt exists, it must go to the accused. That is not leniency…it is the law.”

Former Rajasthan Bar Council chairperson Navrang Chaudhary sees this layered scrutiny as a strength rather than a failure of the justice system.

“Every level of the judiciary works towards the same goal: protecting the innocent and arriving at the truth,” Chaudhary said. “Correction is not collapse. It is balance.”

Chaudhary recalled a principle long cited in criminal jurisprudence: it is better that several guilty persons escape than that one innocent person be punished.

Tayal said the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the death penalty should be imposed only when a crime is extraordinarily harmful to society and there is no possibility of reform. However, he added, lower courts often understand this principle superficially and quickly declare cases to fall within the “rarest of rare” category.

Public discomfort with acquittals in heinous crimes is real. But the data suggests that the deeper crisis lies elsewhere: in a system that too often sentences people to death before it is certain of their guilt.

The unease, then, may not be about acquittals at all, but about how easily the death penalty is imposed before doubt has been fully addressed.

(Amarpal Singh Verma is a Rajasthan-based freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters.) 

This story has been produced by 101Reporters, an independent news agency with a network of 3,000+ freelance journalists across the country, in collaboration with Crime & Punishment, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.