In Brief
A man was convicted of the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl based on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. The Court held that although death penalty is not prohibited in circumstantial evidence cases, it should ordinarily be avoided. The court found that: (1) the prosecution failed to produce available DNA evidence; (2) the trial court ignored mandatory consideration of the convict's probability for reform and rehabilitation; and (3) pending criminal trials were improperly considered as sentencing factors, violating the presumption of innocence. The judgment reaffirms that both the crime and the criminal must be equally weighed in sentencing decisions.
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