Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

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" only a small fraction will ever be actually executed"

How can you know? It is entirely possible that a change in policy will result in all of them hanging within a month. Once you are condemned to death, the only thing between you and the gallows is policy that can be unilaterally changed by whoever decides to carry out the executions or not. The court has spoken, you won't be sentenced again. You are a dead person walking and someone in the executive branch can always decide to let you actually hang. An election of a politician who wants to look tough on crime may result in precisely that.

Tangentially, more than half of the world abolished the death penalty even though terrorism does not spare them. Spain lets Basque butchers live behind bars, so does France with its jihadists.

>It is entirely possible that a change in policy will result in all of them hanging within a month.

It seems to me you dont have the faintest clue how the Indian justice system works, I'm not even sure you're aware that India does have law and order like a civilized democracy. It has major problems within it, but it's not entirely nonexistent.

About the second point, I'd just add again, that public opinion matters.

OK, so if I am a condemned person sitting on an Indian death row, who can order my actual execution?

As far as public opinion goes, yes, it matters, but it may not be decisive. Quite a few European countries would probably re-introduce the death penalty if the question was left entirely to the population (via a referendum). I am sort-of glad that they don't go down this road; not even Ukraine sentences Russian war criminals to death.

Practically the president. The appeal process is deliberately long, except in cases with strong public or international pressure.

A series of more or less automatic appeals ends up at the desk of the President. It's a deliberate act of commission by the President of the time to actually order an execution. And overwhelmingly, they tend to commute.

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