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1 results

  • 3 - The Code: Judges, Juries, and Punishing Difference

  • Alastair McClure, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book:
    Trials of Sovereignty
    Published online:
    20 November 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 111-144

  • Summary

    Chapter Four focuses on how the colonial judiciary and the local government wielded the discretion available in the IPC to manage the punishment of capital crimes. The chapter begins by studying the implications of the new High Courts Act of 1861. I then explore sentencing practices for the crimes of domestic murder and infanticide to consider when and why decision-makers passed more or less severe punishments. I argue that the decision to save some subjects from the gallows helped the law build vital but ultimately fragile alliances between local elites as colonial authorities sought access to the most intimate and politicized areas of Indian life. This process also sharpened colonial terror by regulating the decision to send certain subjects to their death.