Passage Questions on Criminal Law for CLAT PG

It is argued on behalf of the retentions that having regard to the elaborate procedural safeguards enacted by the law in cases involving capital punishment, the possibility of mistake is more imaginary than real and these procedural safeguards virtually make conviction of an innocent person impossible. But I do not think this argument is well founded. It is not supported by factual data.

Hugo Bedau in his well known book, “The Death Penalty in America” has individually documented seventy four cases since 1893 in which it has been responsibly charged and in most of them proved “beyond doubt, that persons were wrongly convicted of criminal homicide in America.

Eight out of these seventy four, though innocent, were executed. Redin, Gardener, Frank and others have specifically identified many more additional cases. These are cases in which it has been possible to show discovery of subsequent facts that the convictions were erroneous and innocent persons were put to death, but there may be many more cases where by reason of the difficulty of uncovering the facts after conviction, let alone after execution, it may not be possible to establish that there was miscarriage of justice.

The jurist Olivecroix, applying a calculus of probabilities to the chance of judicial error, concluded as far back as in 1860 that approximately one innocent man was condemned out of every 257 cases. The proportion seems low but only in relation to moderate punishment. In relation to capital punishment, the proportion is infinitively high. When Huge wrote that he preferred to call the guillotine Lesurques (the name of an innocent man guillotined in the Carrier de Lyon case) he did not mean that every man who was decapitated was a Lesurques, but that one Lesurques was enough to wipe out the value of capital punishment forever.

It is interesting to note that where cases of wrongful execution have come to public attention, they have been a major force responsible for bringing about abolition of death penalty. The Evans case in England in which an innocent man was hanged in 1949 played a large role in the abolition of capital punishment in that country. Belgium also abjured capital punishment on account of one such judicial error and so did Wisconsin, Rhode Island and Maine in the United States of America.”

a. Justice D.Y Chandrachud
b. Justice Y.C Chandrachud
c. Justice Krishna Iyer
d. Justice S.M Sikri

a. 5 judge Bench
b. 2 Judge Bench
c. 7 Judge Bench
d. 13 Judge Bench

a. Doctrine of Basic Structure
b. Doctrine of Stare Decisis
c. Doctrine of Presumption of Innocence
d. Rarest of the Rare doctrine

a. Section 300
b. Section 301
c. Section 302
d. Section 299

a. Section 351
b. Section 354 (3)
c. Section 354 (2)
d. Section 352

a. 262th Law Commission Report in 2015
b. 262th Law Commission Report in 2014
c. 260th Law Commission Report in 2015
d. 261st Law Commission Report in 2015

a. Hugo Bedau
b. Polly Higgins
c. Stephen King
d. Bryan Stevenson

a. Rylands Case
b. Fletcher Case
c. Evans Case
d. All of the Above

a. Wisconsin
b. Rhode Island
c. Maine
d. All of the Above

a. Justice Y.C Chadrachud
b. Justice P.N Bhagwati
c. Justice N Untwalia
d. Justice R Sarkaria

a. Keher Singh .V. Union of India (1988)
b. Shatrughan Chauhan .V. Union of India (2014)
c. All of the Above
d. None of the Above

a. 4:1
b. 4:3
c. 5:2
d. 1:1

a. Bachan Singh and Ors .V. State of Punjab (1982)
b. Mithu .V. State of Punjab (1983)
c. Jagmohan .V. State of U.P (1972)
d. Rajendra Prasad .V. State of U.P (1979)

a. Bachan Singh and Ors .V. State of Punjab (1982)
b. Mithu .V. State of Punjab (1983)
c. Jagmohan .V. State of U.P (1972)
d. Rajendra Prasad .V. State of U.P (1979)

a. Articles 14 and 19
b. Articles 14 and 21
c. Article 14 and 20
d. Articles 20 and 21