4 - Discretion, the Death Penalty, and the Criminal Trial

Summary

Chapter Five charts the creation of standardized and uniform bureaucracies managing pardons and scaffolds across British India. Unlike in England when the number of hangings declined during this period, the colonial state would continue to hang Indians in high numbers until independence. In a bloody context, I ask when did the state pardon or execute, and how? As the chapter demonstrates, the codification of criminal law did not initially produce clear rules about what rights were owed to the condemned. As I argue, the gradual development of standardized procedures and rules to manage the petition for mercy and the spectacle of the scaffold emerged in response to constant challenges from convicts and their supporters. The decisive turn away from the public scaffold in certain executions evidenced the abject failure of the state to deploy terror and mercy to cultivate fearful and obedient subjects in the age of Indian nationalism.