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China tightens law on death sentence

Pallavi Aiyar

Beijing: In what is being called the most important reform of capital punishment in China in over two decades, the legislature has passed an amendment to the law requiring all death sentences to be approved by the Supreme People's Court. The revised law will come into effect from January.

The amendment is the latest in a series of reforms that China has been attempting to make in its legal system. As the erstwhile Middle Kingdom opens its doors to the outside world and seeks to project itself as a modern, progressive nation, the development of the "rule of law" is seen as key to this effort. Already since the beginning of this year a new decree made it compulsory for all death penalty appeals to be held in open court. This week's amendment deprives the lower provincial people's courts of the final say on issuing death sentence — a power they have enjoyed since the mid-80s. China executes a large number of people every year but national statistics on executions and death sentences are not available. There are 68 offences that carry the death penalty including a large number of economic and non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drug offences. Based on available reports the human rights group, Amnesty International, estimates that at least 1,770 persons were executed in 2005 and 3,900 were sentenced to death.

The decision to reform the law appears to be influenced by the rash of wrongful death sentences reported in the media in recent months. For example, in June this year state media publicised the case of Teng Xingshan, a butcher from Hunan province, who was executed in 1989 for the murder of a waitress. Teng protested his innocence all the way to the execution ground. Sixteen years after his execution by gunshot, the butcher was found to be not guilty of the murder. The waitress he had ostensibly killed was in fact found to be alive and in jail.

To handle the extra workload caused by the amendment, 200 judges have been recruited for the top court in addition to the opening of courtrooms, according to reports in the local media.

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