Death Penalty as a Punishment for Heinous Crimes

The punishment of the death which is interchangeably called as a capital punishment has been there in the human society for ages now. In the earlier or even medieval times most kings and monarchies had the tradition of death penalty as a capital punishment. In a lot of these cases the king would himself escort, flag or even drop the sword in order to embark justice. The times changed and the methods somewhat started to differ but the concept of this still remained potent. There are few questions that have been raised over the time on the application of the death penalty. But no society has ever sought the clear definition so as to clearly draw lines where the reasoning of the death punishment or the capital punishment was robust enough. In most of the regimes the criminal act and intentions was definitive of whether the jury would pass an execution sentence or not. In other regimes it was not only the sole duty of the jury to pass such a sentence, other stakeholders empowered by law could actually pass such a thing. One example of such process would be the Islamic law. In the Islamic law it is provisioned that the punishment of the act such as murder would not be passed by the jury or even a judge. The Islamic law demotivates and tries to control the death penalty but in the case of murder or any grave crime, the family of the victim would have onus to pass a death sentence. This is looked as a compensation for their loss. In the research the aim would be to understand, critically analyse and explain the dynamics of the death penalty for heinous crimes. It would be imperative to look at the moral, the utilitarian and the critical view of the same. During research it would be useful to further understand the history of death penalty across the globe and look at the current frameworks and provisions in death penalties. Another important aspect to look at the research would be to understand the definition and critical grounds for the heinous acts. Then some landmark cases would be looked upon in the Indian contexts and the critical analysis of the utilitarian use of all will be done accordingly.