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The Centre on the Death Penalty is a research centre established at the National Law University, Delhi to encourage legal research across various fields. The Centre was established in August 2014 to undertake new avenues of research on the administration of the death penalty, ensure competent legal representation for indigent prisoners sentenced to death, and generate discussions on the death penalty.

The Death Penalty India Report published in May 2016 was the Centre’s first research project and has contributed towards enhancing discourse on the death penalty through empirical research. The Centre currently has three departments, litigation, research and public affairs

Board Of Advisors
NLU Delhi has constituted a Board of Advisors to advise and guide the Centre.

Justice Ruma Pal: A former judge of the Supreme Court of India (January 2000 - June 2006).

Gopalkrishna Gandhi: Currently Distinguished Professor at Ashoka University. Mr. Gandhi was the Governor of West Bengal between 2004-09 and during his administrative and diplomatic career with the Government of India he was India’s High Commissioner/ Ambassador to South Africa, Sri Lanka, Norway and Iceland.

Justice Prabha Sridevan: Former Judge of the Madras High Court  and also former Chairperson of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (April 2011 - August 2013).

Maja Daruwala: Currently a member of the Executive Committee at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). She was CHRI’s director for over two decades between 1996 and 2016.

Siddharth Varadarajan: Journalist, founding Editor of The Wire, and was the Editor of The Hindu from 2011 to 2013.

Prof. Upendra Baxi: Distinguished Professor at National Law University, Delhi and Emeritus Professor at Warwick University. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University between 1990-94.

Litigation
Through the litigation work,the centre provides legal representation to indigent prisoners in death penalty cases. The Centre is involved in the representation of over 50 prisoners on death row from across 12 States. Current litigation is predominantly in the Supreme Court through criminal appeals, open court review petitions, and writs. The Centre’s litigation efforts are also expanding to various High Courts through assistance in confirmation hearings and writs seeking access to prisoner’s health records, urging juvenility claims, challenging improper rejections of mercy petitions, etc.

Research
The Centre works towards generating empirical and qualitative evidence that challenges the existing assumptions about capital punishment. The research of the Centre is grounded in a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach and actively engages with penal philosophy, criminology, forensic science, psychiatry and law.

Mental Health Research Project
The Mental Health Research Project is a nationwide study on the mental health of prisoners sentenced to death in India. Building on the findings of the Death Penalty India Report, the study takes a medico-social approach to the mental health of prisoners sentenced to death in India. It aims to examine the prevalence of mental illness and intellectual disability, as well as document the lived experiences of prisoners on death row with a focus on mental health. This amalgam of mental health and death penalty was chosen to facilitate the development of criminology in India, explore the intersection between psychology and crime.

The project is being carried out in collaboration the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru (NIMHANS).

Trial Court Sentencing Project
This project aims at analysing and documenting the use of the ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine at the trial courts in three states, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The manner in which evidence has been appreciated by the subordinate judiciary is of particular interest in understanding conviction in death penalty cases. By examining how trial courts sentence persons to death, this project seeks to place the subordinate judiciary squarely within the larger death penalty debate, an aspect that deserves immediate and focused attention.

This project draws from the Death Penalty Research Project, where it was found that 94% of death sentences awarded by trial courts over a 15 year period resulted in either acquittals or commutations at the appellate level.

Public Affairs
Premised on the understanding that the discourse on death penalty needs to be taken beyond the courtroom, our public affairs initiative attempts to open up new avenues for discussing the death penalty in India with judges, prisons, other important stakeholders in the criminal justice system, and members of the general public. The inspiration for this work comes from breaking down polarised and singular narratives of the criminal justice system from the perspectives of those who have experienced it, while presenting it in creative, interactive and sensitive ways to a general audience, particularly in the digital space.

The focus of the centre also lies in analysing contemporary and archival data to examine the functioning of the criminal justice system in India and recognising crucial roles of various aspects of study that surround the death penalty.

Death Penalty India Report, 2016
The DPIR is a first of its kind of study on the issue of administration of death penalty in India. The project aimed to map the socio-economic profile of those sentenced to death and their interaction with the criminal justice system. A total of 375 out of 383 prisoners on death row between 2013 and 2015, their families and lawyers were interviewed for the project.

The report consists of two volumes. The first volume of the report contains statistical information including the number of prisoners on death row, the average duration they spend on death row, and the nature of their crimes. The second volume is a qualitative compilation of the experiences of the prisoners in their interaction with the criminal justice system, including torture in police custody, police investigation, relationship with lawyers, and impact on their families. The findings of the Research Project were released as the 'Death Penalty India Report' on 6th May, 2016.

Matters of Judgment: Judges' Opinion Study, 2017
The report records the findings of the opinion study that sought to investigate attitudes towards the death penalty and the criminal justice system through interviewing 60 former judges of the Supreme Court of India. The study records an overwhelming acknowledgment and widespread concern among former Supreme Court judges about the crisis in India’s criminal justice system on account of widespread prevalence of torture, fabrication of evidence, broken legal aid system and wrongful convictions. However, these concerns about the the criminal justice system did not have a bearing on their views on the death penalty. The report was released on 8th December, 2017.

Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report
This is an annual publication of the Centre published at the beginning of each year. The first edition was released on 28th February 2017 and the second edition was released on 24th January 2018.

The report provides the most accurate and updated information on the use of the death penalty in India. Itcovers movements in the death row population in all states as well as political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system. The statistics is compiled through a combination of processes such as data mining of court websites, media monitoring and Right to Information applications.