Read the passage and answer the following questions:
The death penalty alone is not the highest prescribed punishment for any crime in India. A judge always has a choice between awarding either the "death sentence" or "life imprisonment". Once a person is found guilty, the decision about whether to send him to the gallows or keep him behind bars for the rest of his life is taken by the judge. He bases his decision on his appreciation of evidence, his personal value scale and its subjective satisfaction of the prosecution theory. It does not hinge only on the sweet will of the judge, but it is almost so.
What "special circumstances" warrant death for the convict, and how a particular case is concluded as a 'rarest of rare’ case to justify capital punishment, are fluid and often arbitrary. As repeatedly held by legendary jurists Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer and Justice PN Bhagwati, there is neither legislative policy nor legal principle nor judicial precedents that guide a judicial officer, when awarding either life or death. The absence of any clear-cut legal proposition ensures that the process does not end with the judgement alone.
The question of "inordinate delay" as a valid reason to convert a death sentence into imprisonment for life is answered by different judges, benches and political and social sections differently.