China plans to limit use of death penalty

Mar 13, 2007, 12:27 GMT

Beijing - China's highest court plans to tighten controls over the use of the death penalty and ensure uniform sentencing this year, a top official said on Tuesday.

The court has fully prepared its system to review and ratify all death sentences in accordance with a new regulation introduced on January 1, said Xiao Yang, the head of the Supreme People's Court.

This year, the court plans to 'strictly control and prudently apply the death penalty, and complete the ratification procedure for death penalty cases and sentencing standards,' Xiao said in a report to the annual National People's Congress, China's nominal parliament.

The number of cases reviewed by the Supreme People's Court rose by 15 per cent to 3,668 last year, but Xiao did not say how many of the reviews involved death sentences.

Courts declared just 1,713 criminal suspects innocent, or about 0.2 per cent of the total tried, and convicted 889,042 suspects last year, he said.

A total of 153,724 people were sentenced to between five years and life in prison, or to death.

But Xiao did not give the number of death sentences, which China regards as a state secret.

A panel of three judges will review each death sentence for the Supreme People's Court, examine written evidence and request a statement by the defendant, the government's Xinhua news agency on Tuesday quoted a senior legal official as saying.

Criminal suspects who give themselves up or assist in police investigations should receive lenient sentences from local courts, normally precluding the passing of an immediate death sentence, the unidentified official said.

Discretion should also apply to cases involving domestic or civil conflict if a defendant expresses 'sincere regret and actively compensates for the victim's loss.'

Most of those executed in China are convicted of crimes such as murder, rape and robbery, and many people are also executed for economic and other non-violent crimes.

The legal official said death sentences could still be used for economic crimes but should be limited to a few categories of 'extremely serious crimes.'

'For the economic criminals with extremely serious crimes, including extremely serious bribery, embezzlement or other corruption cases, the People's Courts will use the death penalty according to the law as usual,' the official said.

Chinese experts say an automatic review of all death sentences by the Supreme People's Court is likely to bring a large reduction in the annual number of executions, which some rights activists estimate in thousands rather than hundreds.

Law professor Liu Renwen said last year that an estimate of about 8,000 executions annually was 'realistic.'

Liu said that China had probably executed more than 10,000 people annually before 1997, when it abolished capital punishment for theft.

Many of those sentenced to death have no defence lawyers during their trials, and some are tortured during interrogation.

China also admits that organs for transplant are taken from some executed prisoners but says this is only done with the consent of the prisoners or their families.