Introduction  While death sentence continues its presence as a form of punishment in the statute book, the life of several death row convicts hangs by the noose even before they face the gallows. Every death row convict dies several silent deaths awaiting the disposal of his petitions as per the lengthy judicial process. This is a concerning issue.  While the legislature has shown no political will to abolish the death sentence, the judiciary is in the process of devising its own standards for granting of the same. The jurisprudence of death sentence has been moulded in such a way that the process of awarding the same to a person is based on humane underpinnings, as opposed to archaic retributive factors. In this process, the judiciary has also considered whether death sentence can be condoned in case of considerable delay.  On 21 January, 2014, while commuting the death sentence of fifteen convicts in Shatrughan Chauhan and ....