Supreme Court Finds No Evidence of Lethal Injection's Superiority Over Hanging
The Supreme Court of India recently dismissed a petition challenging the statutory prescription of hanging as the method for executing death sentences. A bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta observed that no concrete scientific material had been presented to establish that lethal injection, involving the intravenous administration of drugs to cause death, is a demonstrably superior or more humane mode of execution compared to hanging.
The Court stated that the available material did not demonstrate any added advantage of lethal injection over hanging. Consequently, the argument advanced by the petitioner, Senior Advocate Rishi Malhotra, asserting lethal injection as a better and more humane method, was deemed unconvincing. Malhotra had contended that intravenous lethal injection offered a more scientific, humane, and painless approach to execution. However, the Court found this submission lacked sufficient scientific or empirical support.
Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, representing Project 39A, National Law University Delhi, presented material highlighting the inherent uncertainties and inconsistencies associated with lethal injection. She drew attention to the high rate of botched executions in the United States, citing a record of approximately 276 botched executions out of around 9,000 between 1890 and 2010, which represents a rate of about three percent. Arora also detailed the three-drug protocol commonly employed for lethal injection, which typically includes a barbiturate for inducing unconsciousness, a paralytic agent to halt muscle movement, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Arora submitted that this protocol carries a specific risk: if the initial drug fails to render the prisoner fully unconscious, the subsequent paralytic drug could prevent outward physical manifestations of suffering. This could lead to a prisoner experiencing severe pain while appearing externally calm. As an illustration, she cited the February 2024 execution attempt of Thomas Creech in Idaho, where the execution team failed eight times to insert a functioning intravenous catheter, leading to the execution being called off after approximately two hours of attempts.
Attorney General R. Venkataramani countered these arguments, submitting that the experience of the United States could not definitively establish lethal injection as a humane or reliable alternative. He highlighted difficulties related to venous access, shortages of necessary drugs, the use of untested protocols, and documented instances of botched executions in the US. The Attorney General further pointed out that the petitioner had failed to demonstrate even a single instance of a botched execution in India under the existing statutory framework.
The Supreme Court found merit in the Attorney General's submission. The Court noted that while Project 39A's material showed numerous botched executions in the United States, the petitioner had not provided comparable evidence for India. The Court also referenced the United States Supreme Court's decision in Baze v. Rees (2008), which held that lethal injection does not guarantee a painless death.
Regarding the petitioner's argument that hanging is physically painful and psychologically traumatic, the Court observed that this assertion was not supported by unimpeachable scientific or empirical evidence. The Court concluded that the material presented by Project 39A underscored the inherent complexities and practical difficulties associated with lethal injection, reinforcing the necessity for rigorous constitutional scrutiny of any proposed alternative method of execution before its adoption. Consequently, the Court found no concrete scientific material on record to satisfy it that execution by lethal injection is demonstrably superior or more humane.
The Court further noted that this issue was not being considered for the first time. In Deena v. Union of India (1983), a three-Judge Bench had previously examined various methods of execution, including electrocution, lethal gas, shooting, and lethal injection. That Bench had concluded that none of these alternatives offered any “distinct or demonstrable advantage” over hanging. The Deena judgment had also considered the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment's discussion of lethal injection, which noted that it required intravenous administration, a delicate and skilled procedure, and that prison medical officers interviewed by the Commission had doubted its superiority in humaneness compared to hanging.