Chinese history was made in Kunming, Yunnan Province on Friday, when Naw Kham, the notorious Myanmar drug lord from the Golden Triangle, was executed along with 3 of his accomplices. A flurry of media reports have followed the case given its significance as the first time China has hunted down criminals overseas in such a fashion.
Fewer, however, have noted that this was among the first high-profile executions to have gone through the newly-established death penalty review department under the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP). An official from this department told the Global Times on Monday that they had indeed had a role in the review.
The drug lord and the 3 other convicts were executed by lethal injection after their executions were approved on February 22 by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), the central judicial body that has a final say on all death sentences in the country.
"This case, which has attracted worldwide attention from the very beginning, has been meticulously handled since the criminals were found to have planned and colluded with Thai soldiers in man slaughtering 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in October 2011," the official said.
Experts remain divided, however, as to whether or not the supervision by the new department will result in genuine oversight or merely an added rubber-stamp process.
The last line of defense
The SPP's right to supervise the SPC's review of the death penalty was written into the new edition of the Criminal Procedure Law that took effect this year. The new department was set up late last year.
The SPP can offer advice to the supreme court during reviews of death penalty sentences. Meanwhile, the court is required to report the results of review to the procuratorate. This is the 1st time the SPP has been involved in such cases since the SPC in 2007 took on the responsibility for reviewing death sentences after 27 years.
"Our responsibilities have been further extended to analyzing the results of reviews from the SPC, offering guidance to the provincial prosecutor's office on reviewing the death sentences handed out during the second trial and stipulating requirements for the process," the official said.
"In contrast to the situation when there was barely any supervision from the SPP when the SPC reviewed cases, this is a great step forward," Chen Weidong, director of the Center for Procedural System and Judicial Reform at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.
The law generally lays down the procedures for death sentence reviews, but when it comes to actually implementing them, it is the SPC that decides how they should be followed, said Liu Renwen, director of the criminal law research center under the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
There has been no official figure on how many prisoners were executed during the past few years; however, authorities say that the number has been dropping drastically.
The country removed 13 offences from the list of 68 that were punishable by death in 2011, including tax fraud, the smuggling of cultural relics or precious metals and grave robbery.
Final piece of the system?
Positive implications of the new mechanism include improvements to the death-penalty system and curbs on judicial corruption, according to some experts.
"The country has been sticking to the rule of handing down death sentences in a small number and in a cautious way, the SPC's review process offers an implementation framework and the SPP's supervisory role further provides another safety net," Wang Minyuan, a researcher with the Institute of Law affiliated with the CASS, told the Global Times.
"It is crucial we polish up the review process so as to make it complement the country's objective of slashing the number of executions and avoiding to the maximum extent cases of wrongful sentencing," Wang said.
The SPC said earlier that over 90 % of those sentenced to death received face-to-face arraignment procedures during the review process; however, this was sometimes done using telecommunications technology in a bid to ensure the impartiality and standardization of sentencing.
"It is not enough to only count on the court to completely improve the review procedures of death sentences in China," said Liu, adding that defense lawyers and prosecutors would also need to contribute.
"The new department's supervision has solid and reliable mechanisms as its basis, as it is placed on the same level as those key SPP departments," Chen said, adding that this helps the judicial organ view suspects as innocent until proven guilty.
Doubts over effectiveness
Wang pointed out that the law still requires judicial clarification. "As stipulated in the law, the SPC is required to report the results of reviews to the SPP, but does this 'report' apply to all the cases under review or only to those where the SPP has offered advice?"
An official surnamed Cao from the Sichuan Provincial People's Procuratorate said that after the prosecutor's office hands over the case file to the court for trial, there is no way the case would be returned. "Only reporting whether it's approved or rejected is little more than a rubber stamp," he said.
"How can we offer advice if they give us nothing related to the case but the result of the review?" Cao argued, wondering whether the change would merely be an empty procedure or an in-depth review that requires staff to talk to the defendants.
He told the Global Times that based on the current Criminal Procedure Law, it would be "pretty hard for the SPP to adjust to their new position."
"For the supreme procuratorate, the establishment of this office marks the finishing of an intact judicial procedure, but in terms of supervision over the review, they might be afflicted by inefficiency and delays," Cao added, but made sure to point out that new interpretations will "put it on track."
In terms of getting the public involved, however, the new department does not come with regulations aimed at transparency.
Wu Hongyao, a criminal law professor from the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Legal Daily that the SPC should review death penalty cases in open court, and offer a platform for the defendant's lawyer and prosecutors to air their suggestions, thus promoting transparency. "By opening these reviews to the public, the justifications for the process will be strengthened, as well as the public's acceptance of it," he said.
Source: The Global Times, March 5, 2013