China Pledges to Reduce Death Sentences

China, which executes more people than any other country, says it will show more leniency to those given death sentences, state media reported Wednesday.

In a series of interviews, the vice president of the Supreme People's Court said that China was not ready to abolish capital punishment but that the penalty should be reserved for a small number of serious crimes, particularly those that threaten social stability.

More than 60 crimes can draw the death penalty in China, including tax evasion, embezzlement and drug trafficking, but the government does not release figures on the number of executions, many of which take place immediately after a defendant's conviction.

"Judicial departments should use the least number of death sentences as possible, and death penalties should not be given to those having a reason for not being executed," Zhang Jun, the courts vice president, was quoted as saying in the newspaper China Daily.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International estimate that more than 1,700 people were put to death in China in 2008, a sharp drop from previous years in which as many as 15,000 executions took place. The United States, by contrast, put to death 37 people last year. The number of executions in China began dropping in 2001 not long after Beijing was chosen as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics but they have fallen more sharply since 2007, when the countrys high court was given the power to review all capital punishment cases.

Last year, according to China Daily, the court overturned 10 % of all death sentences meted out by lower courts. Although he did not spell out exactly how the judiciary would restrict the use of capital punishment, Mr. Zhang suggested that the number of eligible crimes would be scaled back through legislation and that provincial courts would be encouraged to mete out a sentence known as "death penalty with reprieve."

He noted that in recent cases, the high court had overturned death sentences for crimes of passion or for convicts who expressed remorse and vowed to compensate their victim's relatives. As an example, he cited a man surnamed Shao who was convicted of killing his girlfriend after learning of her affair. Mr. Zhang said the high court suspended Mr. Shao's death sentence because he showed regret and pledged compensation for the woman's family.

Other mitigating factors were that the victim's behavior may have provoked the boyfriend's violence and in the end, Mr. Zhang added, the crime did not "have a major social impact."

He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University and a vocal critic of the death penalty, said that despite pressure from Chinese legal experts and international rights organizations, most people in China support capital punishment as a means to control crime and exact vengeance.

"Throughout Chinese history, there has always been an emphasis on public executions, the more cruel the better," he said. "But civilization has evolved, and its time we abandon, or at least severely limit, the use of capital punishment."

Source: New York Times, July 30, 2009