Since 2013, India has seen a consistent legislative expansion of the death penalty for sexual offences including the introduction of the death penalty for non-homicidal child rape. However, the death penalty remains a discretionary and exceptional punishment in law and life imprisonment is the default sentence for capital crimes. In exercising sentencing discretion, the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India in Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab (1980) mandates that judges should fulfill two objectives: undertake individualised sentencing by considering the circumstances of the crime and the offender; and if imposing the death penalty, exceptionalise it by demonstrating that the default punishment of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed. Through an empirical content analysis of 85 trial court sentencing orders that resulted in 97 death sentences for child rapes, this paper assesses the effectiveness of these orders in meeting the aforementioned objectives. 68 of the 85 sentencing orders resulted in the death penalty for homicidal child rape in three Indian states including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh between 2016 and 2021. The remaining 17 orders are in relation to death sentences imposed for non-homicidal child rapes across India since its enforcement as a capital offence in 2018. The analysis reveals that trial judges rely on a typology of retributivist, utilitarian and institutional justifications to impose the death penalty in a manner that these justifications can be applied to all death eligible child rape cases. While the lack of individualisation and the failure to consider the option of life imprisonment is not unique to child rape capital cases in India’s trial courts, I rely on the data to argue that the capital sentencing crisis is more acute in child rape cases by the virtue of the crime category. In light of these findings, I discuss what consistency should look like in the Indian capital sentencing context and identify components that should be a part of a sentencing order that imposes the death penalty. Finally, I analyse both the relevance and limitations of changes in the formal law.

自 2013 年以来，印度不断立法扩大对性犯罪的死刑，包括对非杀人儿童强奸引入死刑。然而，死刑仍然是法律上的一种可自由裁量的特殊刑罚，无期徒刑是对死刑罪行的默认刑罚。印度最高法院宪法法官在巴坎·辛格诉旁遮普邦案中行使量刑自由裁量权(1980) 规定法官应实现两个目标：通过考虑犯罪情况和罪犯的情况进行个性化量刑；如果判处死刑，则应证明无期徒刑的默认处罚无疑已被取消，从而将其作为例外。本文通过对 85 份初审法院判决令（其中 97 人因强奸儿童而被判处死刑）进行实证内容分析，评估了这些判决在实现上述目标方面的有效性。2016 年至 2021 年间，马哈拉施特拉邦、中央邦和北方邦等印度三个邦的 85 份量刑令中，有 68 份因强奸儿童杀人罪被判处死刑。其余 17 项命令与印度自 2018 年将非杀人儿童强奸罪作为死罪执行以来判处的死刑有关。分析显示，初审法官依靠报应主义、功利主义和制度理由来判处死刑。刑罚的方式使得这些理由可以适用于所有符合死亡条件的儿童强奸案件。虽然缺乏个性化和没有考虑终身监禁的选择并不是印度初审法院儿童强奸死刑案件所特有的情况，但我依靠数据认为，死刑判决危机在儿童强奸案件中更为严重，因为属于犯罪类别。根据这些发现，我讨论了印度死刑判决背景下的一致性应该是什么样子，并确定了判处死刑的量刑命令的组成部分。最后，我分析了正式法律变化的相关性和局限性。