Indian Polity & Constitution
In News: Even as the Supreme Court has called for reforming death penalty sentencing, trial courts awarded 165 death sentences in 2022, the highest in over two decades, according to the Annual Death Penalty Report, 2022. The report will be released on Monday by Project 39A
- This shift has been sharply influenced by the extraordinary sentencing of 38 persons to death in Ahmedabad in a single bomb blast case, representing the largest number of persons sentenced to death in a single case since 2016
Project 39A
- It is a criminal reforms advocacy group with the National Law University, Delhi.
- It is inspired by Article 39-A of the Indian Constitution, a provision that furthers the intertwined values of equal justice and equal opportunity by removing economic and social barriers
- Project 39A aims to trigger new conversations on legal aid, torture, forensics, mental health in prisons, and the death penalty, using empirical research to re-examine practices and policies in the criminal justice system
- The dismal state and sometimes the absence of record-keeping in the police, prisons and courts along with multiple barriers to accessing records/ data complicates criminal justice research in India.
Source: Indian Express
