DCPC1204 | Defending Capital Punishment Cases

How does this course relate to the programme curriculum: Does it develop on a prior course  in the programme or is it a foundational or standalone course?

This course develops on the prior core courses of Constitutional law, IPC, CrPC and Evidence  but from a practitioner’s perspective. The course will explore legal, moral and philosophical  questions arising from the use of death penalty in a modern democracy. The course will focus  on the different stages of a capital case, starting from arrest to the point of execution. It will  cover key evidentiary issues in a capital case and deliberate matters of litigation strategy and  tactics, apart from traversing the development of law on various issues such as use of  aggravating and mitigating features, special due process mechanisms applicable in a death  case, limits on the use of death sentence for certain categories, arbitrary and discriminatory  application of death sentence, miscarriage of justice claims and clemency jurisdiction in death  sentence cases.