Only one death sentence confirmed by High Court in 2023, lowest since 2000

Chennai sees a decrease in death sentences confirmed by courts in 2023, attributed to high death row population.

Only one death sentence was confirmed by a High Court in 2023, marking the lowest rate by the appellate courts since 2000, according to a report. The Karnataka High Court confirmed a death sentence in a murder simpliciter case. This year also saw the Supreme Court not confirming any death sentences, the second time since 2021.

Notably, there has been a 15% decrease in the rate of disposal of death penalty confirmation proceedings at the High Courts in 2023, with 57 death penalty cases being disposed of in 2023, compared with 68 cases in 2022, according to the report titled, ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics 2023’, released by Project 39A, an advocacy group with the National Law University, Delhi.

This significant decline in the case disposal rate of death penalties is attributed to the high death row population in the country.

The report noted that with 120 death sentences imposed by trial courts and 561 prisoners under the sentence of death by the end of December of last year, 2023 had the highest number of prisoners on death row in nearly two decades, and the second-highest since 2000, based on data by the National Crime Record Bureau’s (NCRB) Prison Statistics Reports.

There was a 45.71% increase in the number of prisoners under death sentence by the end of December 2023, from that in 2016.

Similar to the last five years, the majority of death penalty cases in trial courts involved crimes related to sexual offences. Of the 120 death sentences imposed by trial courts, more than 50% were for homicidal rapes.

Notably, the trial courts imposed death sentences in 86.96% of its cases in the absence of any information relating to the accused, despite the Supreme Court’s mandate in Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2022), the report said.