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Meeting hears calls for death penalty reform
By Jiang Zhuqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-23 07:13
Courts at all levels have been ordered to set tougher procedural standards
for trials involving the death penalty - a step legal experts have hailed as a
sign that China will reduce its use of capital punishment.
"Every procedure of the first trial, second trial and retrial, as well as the
reviewing of the death penalty, must be rigidly executed," Cao Jianming,
vice-president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said at a recent seminar for
senior justice officials in Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning Province.
Courts are now also being urged to examine evidence more carefully to avoid
incorrect death sentences, he said.
"Lessons should be learnt from trials to perfect the system in the area of
capital punishment," the vice-president said.
"Cao's speech indicates that the nation plans to decrease the number of
capital punishment sentences in order to follow the policy to 'kill fewer, kill
carefully'," Chen Xingliang, a law professor at Peking University, said.
Recent examples such as the case of She Xianglin, who was wrongly convicted
and served 11 years in prison for murder, and the unjust murder case of Nie
Shubin have widened debate over the possibility of abolishing the death penalty
in China.
But there also exist some vague articles in China's Criminal Code that have
led to chaotic standards among the lower courts in doling out the death penalty,
Chen said.
For example, the code stipulates that the death penalty is to be imposed for
the most serious crimes, "but there is no detailed regulation on how serious
'the most serious' has to be," he said.
China's current laws dictate that all death penalty rulings given by local
intermediate people's courts or above should be submitted to the SPC for
approval, but in cases involving violent crimes such as murder, rape and
robbery, provincial higher courts are empowered to approve executions.
China uses the death penalty for a wide range of crimes, from murder to
economic crimes such as corruption. Criminals who are not required by law to be
executed immediately would receive a two-year probation before execution is
carried out.
Believing the death penalty should be abolished in the long run, Chen
suggested that the court increase long-term sentences instead of using the death
penalty.
"When the long-term imprisonment system is set up, judges will be less likely
to resort to capital punishment," Vice-Minister of Justice Zhang Jun said at
another seminar earlier this year.
A survey by the ministry last year found that most serious criminals who were
sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison only for 15 years or so
before being released.
"The focus of reforming the punishment system is not to abolish the death
penalty," he said, "but to set up more long-term prison sentences - for example,
20- or 30-year sentences - to reduce the use of the death penalty."
(China Daily 07/23/2005 page2)
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