CHINA / Foreign Media on China
A major shift on executions
(AP)
Updated: 2006-11-01 09:06
China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other
nations combined, took a step toward human rights Tuesday by enacting
legislation that requires approval from the country's highest court
before putting anyone to death.
Human rights activists expressed hope the country will reduce its use of
the ultimate penalty. The amendment to China's capital punishment law
follows reports of executions of wrongly convicted people and criticism
that lower courts have arbitrarily imposed the death sentence.
China is thought to put to execute hundreds, and possibly thousands, of
people each year for crimes ranging from murder to such nonviolent
offenses as tax evasion. Amnesty International says China executed at
least 1,770 people in 2005, but the true number is thought to be many
times higher.
In a statement Tuesday, the London-based rights group cited a senior
member of China's national legislature as saying some 10,000 people are
executed each year. By Amnesty's figures of known executions, China was
responsible for more than 80 percent of the 2,148 people executed last
year around the world, including 60 in the United States.
"Clearly the changes are going in the right direction," Mark Allison, a
Hong Kong-based researcher for Amnesty, said of the new legislation,
which takes effect Jan. 1. "But we're still calling for China to go
further �� to abolish the death penalty."
China's official Xinhua News Agency hailed the amendment as "the most
important reform of capital punishment in China in more than two decades."
The change "deprives the provincial people's courts of the final say on
issuing death sentences," the agency said. "Death penalties handed out by
provincial courts must be reviewed and ratified by the Supreme People's
Court."
The change adopted by the legislature Tuesday enshrines last year's
announcement by the Supreme People's Court that it would start reviewing
all death sentences, ending a 23-year-old practice of giving the final
review to provincial courts.
"It's great news. This is a big step forward for China's legal system and
human rights," said Li Heping, a prominent activist lawyer.
"It's going to have a psychological effect on local judges when they are
making decisions because they are going to be afraid that if they approve
capital punishment, the supreme court will overrule them," Li said.
Jerome Cohen, an American expert on Chinese law, called the new law
"encouraging and significant" but said the next challenge will be
enforcing the change.
"The court has been working hard to recruit a sufficient number of
judges. It's proving to be slow going," Cohen said. "That itself tells
you what a huge burden it is to adequately review the large number of
death sentences."
Details about criteria for reviewing death sentences, as well as the
standards and procedures, have to be worked out, he said.
In June, Xinhua said 30 judges from lower-level courts had been selected
as the first trainees for death penalty tribunals. It said they will get
three months of training and be on probation for a year before receiving
a final appointment.
The court was also considering lawyers and law school teachers for the
tribunals, Xinhua said.
Complaints have been common that lower-level courts mishandle death
penalty cases.
Last year, a woman believed murdered in the 1980s in the central province
of Hunan reappeared, 16 years after the man convicted of killing her was
executed.
At the time of the execution, the court reportedly said the defendant
confessed. Chinese police often are accused of torturing suspects into
making confessions.
The case is one of a number of high-profile cases that state media has
publicized in recent years highlighting the flaws of an aggressive policy
of judicial executions. Death penalty lawyers and legal scholars in China
have also begun discussing more openly the need for China to establish
clearer procedures for the death penalty.
There has not been any debate, however, about abolishing capital
punishment.
T. Kumar, the advocacy director for Asia for Amnesty International USA,
said the shift came from a sense in the Chinese state media and academic
community that the current system was unfair.
"There was some discussion that innocent people were being killed," he
said. "They want to bring the death penalty issue under control. They
were killing too many people."
Xiao Yang, the high court's president, said the new legislation is "an
important procedural step to prevent wrongful convictions," according to
Xinhua. "It will also give the defendants in death sentence cases one
more chance to have their opinions heard."
The high court itself has been involved in controversial death penalty
decisions.
In December 2003, a gang boss who said he was tortured into confessing to
corruption charges was executed in the northeastern city of Shenyang in
an anti-graft crackdown.
A provincial court had issued a reprieve, citing the possibility the
torture claims might be true, but the Supreme People's Court overruled
that decision and ordered his immediate execution.
Cohen said he hoped the amendment means that "ultimately there will be a
reduction in the number of people executed - and certainly the number of
people executed wrongly."
However, Amnesty noted in its statement that there is a danger the new
legislation "could further entrench the death penalty system in China."
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