The question of whether the accused should be heard before receiving death penalty was referred by the Supreme Court to a five-judge bench. Judges S. Ravindra Bhat, Sudhanshu Dhulia, and Chief Justice of India UU Lalit's bench noted that there were conflicting rulings regarding whether to grant an accused person a hearing before passing judgement imposing death penalty.
The court remarked that in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, the majority decision of the court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty subject to its application in only the "rarest of rare" circumstances. The majority in Bachan Singh noted that convicts would have access to a separate hearing to argue against the use of death penalty. According to the Law Commission, courts should "give the party or parties concerned an opportunity of producing evidence or material relating to the various factors bearing on the question of sentence," as stated in the judgement. The court emphasised that the existence of "valuable safeguards" was a crucial factor in upholding the legality of death penalty in the rarest of cases.
The bench also stated that numerous other judgments had reaffirmed the necessity of a separate hearing on the subject of the mandatory imposition of death sentence. The court discovered that after reading these judgments—namely, Santa Singh, Muniappan, Malkiat Singh, and others—it had come to a different conclusion: same-day sentencing DID not always violate Section 235(2) of the CrPC. The bench recorded:
‘This contrary line of cases is based on the premise that the court may adjourn for a separate hearing, but the absence of it would not in itself vitiate the sentence. In Dagdu v. State of Maharashtra, a three-judge bench of this court rejected the interpretation of Santa Singh as laying down that failure on part of the court to hear a convicted accused, on the question of sentence, would necessitate remand to the trial court. Instead, it held that such an omission could be remedied by the higher court by affording a hearing to the accused on the question of sentence, provided the hearing was "real and effective" wherein the accused was permitted to "adduce before the court all the data which he desires to be adduced on the question of the sentence"...Thus, it was held that while the accused facing the possibility of death sentence was not entitled to an adjournment, nothing barred the court from granting the same. Several decisions have since relied on Dagdu, and concluded that the action of the court sentencing an accused on the same day as conviction in itself would not vitiate the sentence.’
The bench then referred to the court's rulings on this matter and noted an express acknowledgement to the accused must be given as a meaningful, real, and effective hearing with the opportunity to present evidence pertinent to the sentencing issue.
According to the court, the present suo moto petition was started after it was noticed that there was no standard procedure for separate hearings in death penalty cases. It took into consideration the case of Manoj & Ors. v. State of Madhya Pradesh, where concerns regarding the lack of such a framework were noted and the necessity of a separate hearing and background investigation of the accused was emphasised. In this case, it was argued that the social context, age, educational attainment, whether the offender had experienced trauma earlier in life, family circumstances, psychological assessment of an offender, and post-conviction behaviour were important considerations when determining whether the accused should receive death penalty.