Like any human being, a convict too has only one life and cannot serve consecutive sentences of life imprisonment, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held on Tuesday in an explanation on why there is no point in awarding life sentences twice and thrice over to those found guilty of heinous crimes.
Multiple life sentences will be served concurrently and not consecutively, the court held. “Any direction that requires the offender to undergo imprisonment for life twice over would be anomalous and irrational for it will disregard the fact that humans, like all other living beings, have but one life to live,” the judgment authored by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur interpreted the law.
The vexing question before the Constitution Bench was “whether consecutive life sentences can be awarded to a convict on being found guilty of a series of murders for which he has been tried in a single trial?”
To this, Chief Justice Thakur asked what was the meaning of awarding “consecutive” life sentences to a person when a 'life imprisonment' extends to the very death of the offender, who has but one life.
A Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, pronounced its verdict rejecting multiple life terms for a convict guilty of heinous crimes, on a reference from a three-judge Bench of the apex court.
“Logic behind life sentences not running consecutively lies in the fact that imprisonment for life implies imprisonment till the end of the normal life of the convict,” Chief Justice Thakur observed in the verdict for the Bench comprising Justices F.M.I. Kalifulla, A.K. Sikri, S.A. Bobde and R. Banumathi.
The case deals with the appeals filed by convicts accused of a single instance of multiple murders in Tamil Nadu. The trial court had awarded them life sentences for each murder they committed and pronounced them to be served consecutively — that is one after the other.
Interestingly, the Madras High Court also agreed with the trial court's logic.
Interpreting Section 31 (sentence in cases of conviction of several offences at one trial) of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Constitution Bench clarified that two or more life sentences have to run concurrently and not consecutively, the latter being an “obvious impossibility”.
It further held that the subsequent imprisonment for life awarded to a prisoner can be “superimposed” over the earlier life sentence.
That is, if a prisoner twice condemned to life gets remission or his first life sentence is commuted, the second life sentence immediately kicks in and depriving him of the ability to enjoy the benefit of the remission or commutation of the first life sentence.
In short, he is likely to be perpetually in jail. The judgment deals with several interesting combinations of jail sentences.
In one, the court asks what would happen if an offender is given life imprisonment coupled with 'term' sentences of fixed years, say seven or 10 years. Will he serve the life sentence first or the term sentences in jail?
The court lays down the law that in such cases the convict would complete his term sentence before graduating to his life sentence. The converse would be improbable as life imprisonment extends till his last breath and “there is no question of his undergoing any further sentence”.
A second such question is what if a person convicted for life is out on parole and commits a second crime for which he is again sentenced to life imprisonment.
The court said both life sentences would run concurrently and the second life term would be “super-imposed” on the first, effectively denying him any chance of a pre-mature release from prison.
