Read the following passage carefully and then answer the accompanying questions employing the concepts provided in the passage:
Criminal law is the most direct expression of the relationship between a state and its citizens. Criminal sanction is indeed the most coercive method of regulating an individual‘s behaviour which any state may deploy. The degree of coercion under criminal law is qualitatively different from the outcome in a dispute under civil law. The purpose of criminal law is to forbid and prevent conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests. Feinberg explains the harm principle in following words: 'It is always a good reason in support of penal legislation that it would probably be effective in preventing (eliminating, reducing) harm to persons other than the actor and there is probably no other means that is equally effective at no greater cost to other values'.
The Supreme Court itself admitted in Santosh Kumar Bariyar (2009) that death penalty is imposed ‗arbitrarily or freakishly‘. The court made a candid admission in saying that ‗there is no uniformity of precedents‘. In Sangeet (2013), the Court yet again acknowledged that ‗principled sentencing‘ has become ‗judge centric‘. In Swami Shraddhananda (2008), the Court said, award of death sentence depends on the ‗personal predilection of judges‘ and there is ‗lack of uniformity‘ in capital punishment. Which of the following statements is correct?
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