Legal Definitions - incommutable

An offense is considered incommutable if its prescribed punishment cannot be reduced or changed to a less severe one. This means that, unlike some sentences, the penalty for an incommutable offense cannot be lessened through a process like commutation.

The term incommutable refers to a punishment or sentence that cannot be reduced or lessened by an act of executive clemency, such as a pardon or a commutation. To understand incommutable, it's helpful to first understand commutation.

Commutation is when a legal penalty, typically a prison sentence, is reduced to a less severe one by an executive authority (like a president or governor). For example, a death sentence might be commuted to life imprisonment, or a long prison term might be shortened. When a sentence is described as incommutable, it means that, by law or specific decree, no such reduction is permitted.

• Example 1: Mandatory Sentencing Laws

  A state legislature passes a new law stipulating that individuals convicted of certain aggravated felonies, such as serial murder or high-level drug trafficking, must serve a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. The law explicitly states that this particular sentence is incommutable by the governor or any other executive body. This means that even if a future governor wished to reduce the sentence for a convicted individual, they would be legally prohibited from doing so, as the law has made that specific punishment unchangeable.

• Example 2: International Criminal Tribunal Rulings

  An international court, established to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentences a former dictator to 30 years in prison for his role in genocide. The court's charter and the specific judgment declare that sentences handed down for these grave international offenses are incommutable. This ensures that the punishment for such severe violations of human rights cannot be reduced by any national government or international body, emphasizing the gravity and finality of the judgment.