The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the death sentence of the four men found guilty of the gangrape and torture of a 23-year-old physiotherapist in a moving bus in Delhi which led to an excruciatingly painful death in December 2012 is making headlines yet again. This time it is the date of the execution that is making news. The debate on whether or not death penalty is a deterrent for rape has been overshadowed by a ghoulish fascination with the technology to execute the punishment. In anticipation of the execution of the four men, the media has lamented the lack of executioners and bemoaned the fact that the Tihar jail has had to borrow an executioner. The architecture of the scaffold has been described in forensic detail the idea of the simultaneous hanging of four men on a scaffold, especially constructed for them, produces nervous excitement. And, the delay is seen as irritating, as if the hangings would satiate the public thirst for vengeance. Justice is conflated with vengeance and the public gaze is fixated on the gallows. The judiciary, abashed by the accusations of delay, has turned the blame on the Tihar bureaucracy. And the Tihar bureaucracy inches towards the gallows by moving the death row convicts to Jail Number Three, where the hanging will reportedly take place. Legal procedures, especially those related to the rights of the death row convicts, are seen as tactics to prolong the inevitable. Media columns are not concerned with the question of how state violence is staged to obfuscate difficult questions of law and life. State killing is, in fact, made cinematic. The President has turned down the mercy petitions. The President’s statement, Rape convicts under the POCSO Act should not have the right to file mercy petition. Parliament should review mercy petitions is troubling. The right to file a mercy petition is a constitutional right of a death row convict. While child sexual abuse deserves condemnation and strict liability laws should be implemented, the suspension of mercy in such cases cannot be justified on the grounds that such abuse is exceptional violence. Death penalty is not a feminist demand. Feminists have consistently argued for feminising procedure and fair trial. They have contended that more victims will be killed by rapists if death penalty was written into the rape law.