China says it uses death penalty sparingly

Source: The Japan Times (12 March 2017)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/12/asia-pacific/crime-legal-asia-pacific/china-says-uses-death-penalty-sparingly/#.WMfSXPnyvIU

BEIJING – China’s chief justice said Sunday that his country, which is believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined, gave the death penalty “to an extremely small number of criminals for extremely serious offenses” in the past 10 years.

The actual number of executions in China is a state secret. A 2007 decision that all death sentences must be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court is believed to have reduced the number of executions dramatically.

Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said in his report to the national legislature that the court has “strictly controlled and prudently applied” the death penalty, without giving any figures.

Dui Hua, a U.S.-based rights group that focuses on legal justice, estimated that about 2,400 people were executed in 2013, one-tenth the number in 1983. It said that, according to its sources, the number of annual executions remained largely unchanged in 2014 and 2015.

China can punish 46 crimes with the death penalty. It is typically given in cases of murder, rape, robbery and drug offenses.

Zhou also said Sunday that over the coming year, courts will use the law to severely punish crimes of harming state security and violent terrorism “to resolutely safeguard the country’s political security.”

China put 2,400 people to death last year, making it the world's top executioner: US-based rights group

Source: ABC News (21 October 2014)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-21/china-executed-2400-people-last-year-rights-group-says/5831116

China is the world's top executioner, a US­based rights group says, putting 2,400 people to death last year. The number sheds rare light on a statistic Beijing considers a state secret. The figure represented a fall of 20 per cent from 2012, the Dui Hua Foundation said, and a fraction of the 12,000 deaths in 2002. China is so reticent on the issue that it has done nothing to publicise the long­term decline in its use of the death penalty. But it still executes more people than every other country put together, rights groups say. The total for the rest of the world combined was 778 people in 2013, according to campaign group Amnesty International's annual report earlier this year. It does not give an estimate for Chinese executions.

Dui Hua said that it obtained its figures from "a judicial official with access to the number of executions carried out each year". But the recent annual declines were "likely to be offset" this year, it said, due to factors including the "strike hard" campaign in the violence-­wracked largely Muslim region of Xinjiang. Hundreds of people have been convicted of terrorist offences in the area and last week a court condemned 12 to death in connection with a July attack. "China currently executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, but it has executed far fewer people since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the (Supreme People's Court) in 2007," Dui Hua said.

China's top court examines all death sentences issued in the country and sent back 39 per cent of those it reviewed last year to lower courts for additional evidence, Dui Hua said, citing a report by the Southern Weekly newspaper. The Chinese legal system is tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party and courts have a near­100 per cent conviction rate in criminal cases. The use of force to extract confessions remains widespread in the country, leading to a number of miscarriages of justice. China has occasionally exonerated wrongfully executed convicts after others came forward to confess their crimes, or in some cases because the supposed murder victim was later found alive. In one landmark case in June, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for Li Yan, a woman who killed her abusive husband. 

Deciding Death: How Chinese Judges Review Capital Punishment Cases

Source: Dui Hua (18 November 2014)

http://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2014/11/deciding-death-how-chinese-judges.html

In the eastern part of Beijing, not far from the city’s main railway station, sits an unmarked, multi-storey office building whose importance can only be discerned by the presence of armed police guards posted at its entrance. This is where the five criminal divisions of China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) are located, the place where the fates of the country’s death-row defendants are ultimately determined.

A recent feature article in Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly newspaper has shed new light on how the more than 300 court personnel who work in this building handle the thousands of capital punishment cases sent for final review each year. Below, we summarize the article’s descriptions of the process in order to enable even more people to understand the way that these life-and-death decisions are made.

After the appeals process has run its course and a decision involving the death penalty takes effect, the case file is sent to the SPC for mandatory review. The case is first assigned a case number, and then all of the relevant case files are delivered to one of the court’s five divisions according to the geographic origin of the case or, in some cases, the type of crime involved. 

Unlike the other four divisions, which are larger and handle many more cases, the court’s second criminal division is dedicated to handling review of some of the most sensitive cases: those involving crimes by government or party officials; cases involving foreigners or defendants from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan; crimes under the category of “endangering state security”; and cases involving defendants from Xinjiang.

Division	Region	Specialization
First	Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Shandong, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian	Crimes against the rights of women and children, the environment, intellectual property
Second	Nationwide, Xinjiang	Crimes involving people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and foreign countries; occupational crimes; crimes involving members of the armed forces; cases involving crimes of endangering state security and politically sensitive cases; all Xinjiang cases
Third	Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Tibet, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jiangxi	Organized crime
Fourth	Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan	Major accident liability crimes
Fifth	Beijing, Tianjian, Liaoning, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Hubei, Hunan	Drug crime

Source: Dui Hua, Southern Weekly

Within each division, cases are assigned first to quasi-administrative units divided either by geography or case type. These units then assign each case to a panel of three judges, one of whom is designated as the principal case manager. This judge will take responsibility for reviewing the case files and liaising with lower courts or law-enforcement agencies over any questions that might arise.

Sometimes, review of the case files uncovers very basic errors that could have an impact either on conviction or sentencing. In many instances, additional details or investigation will be required, and sometimes the SPC judge handling the case will have to go personally to the provinces to conduct investigations. According to one SPC official, additional investigation was required in 39 percent of the cases sent to the SPC for review in 2013.

Under new provisions introduced into the Criminal Procedure Law in 2012, judges are also required to interview defendants before deciding whether or not to confirm a death sentence. If the case is relatively straightforward, these interviews may be conducted remotely via video feed. However, if more problems are uncovered in the case file, then the judge handling the case will typically go to conduct the interview in person. One judge told Southern Weekly that, in the interest of reducing the burden on local courts, SPC judges try to minimize travel to the provinces and attempt to handle multiple cases on a single trip as much as possible.

The principal judge will then write a detailed report covering the results of his or her review of the case, summarizing any problems with the evidence or other issues that could have an impact on conviction or sentencing. This report is then circulated along with the case file to the other two members of the judicial panel responsible for the case, each of whom conduct their own review and write their own report.

Then, after each of the three judges has reviewed the case independently, they meet to discuss the case as a group in the presence of a court clerk. After coming to a decision, the panel then reports to the responsible division head and SPC vice president. If the decision is to execute the death penalty, the case then goes to the SPC president for his signature.

If court officials identify a problem with the panel’s decision or the panel is unable to reach consensus on how to decide, the case might be sent to the division’s council of chief judges for additional discussion. If this does not lead to a decision, the case might be sent for discussion by the SPC adjudication committee or the special committee for criminal adjudication. The Southern Weekly article makes pains to note that these bodies play only an advisory role and that final decision-making power rests solely with the three-judge panel.

As they review death penalty cases, judges pay particular attention to issues of evidence and penal policy. In recent years, the SPC has introduced and refined measures for excluding evidence that has been obtained illegally, and the court’s stricter line on evidence is one of the reasons why China’s highest court rejects roughly 10 percent of death penalty cases each year.

The impact of penal policy is much more fluid and hard to predict. Over time, the court has settled on a number of general principles designed to reduce use of the death penalty. For example, in cases involving the death of a single victim the death penalty is typically waived if the defendant surrenders or if the case involves a dispute among family members or neighbors. But putting these more lenient policies into effect often requires overcoming resistance from a victim’s family members. In fact, one reason why the process of reviewing death penalties is often delayed is because efforts are underway to use court mediation to “work on” these family members and obtain their agreement for more lenient punishment.

For example, the article reveals that in the case of Li Yan (李彦), whose sentence to death for murdering her abusive husband caused a national sensation in 2013, the SPC’s adjudication committee decided relatively early on that the circumstances of the case did not require her immediate execution. The victim’s family initially refused to accept anything less that Li’s execution, even staging protests outside local court buildings. But rather than give in to such pressure, the court delayed its decision until emotions died down and the victim’s relatives were able to accept the decision.

As the Supreme People’s Court Monitor blog recently pointed out, one potentially groundbreaking reform being considered would ensure that all defendants in death penalty cases are represented by a lawyer during the death penalty review process. The Southern Weekly article reveals that the SPC is in the process of drafting provisions entitled “Regulations on Considering the Views of Defense Lawyers in Death Penalty Review Cases.” These follow on amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law in 2012 aimed at strengthening legal representation during the death penalty review process that have not yet fully translated into a right to legal defense for capital defendants. Ensuring that all defendants in cases involving capital punishment have legal representation throughout the criminal process, regardless of economic means, would be another important step toward strengthening rights protections in the criminal process in China.

China considers abolishing death penalty for 9 crimes

Source: Daily Sabah (27 October 2014)

http://www.dailysabah.com/asia/2014/10/27/china-considers-abolishing-death-penalty-for-9-crimes

China is considering trimming nine crimes from the list of offences punishable by death, state media said on Monday, as the ruling Communist Party considers broader reforms to the country's legal system.

Rights groups say China uses capital punishment more than any other country, raising public concern of irreversible miscarriages of justice.

A draft amendment to China's criminal law, which includes the use of the death penalty, was submitted for initial review to the country's National People's Congress, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Crimes that would be exempt from capital punishment under the amendment include "smuggling weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials or counterfeit currencies; counterfeiting currencies; raising funds by means of fraud; and arranging for or forcing another person to engage in prostitution", Xinhua said.

The crimes of "obstructing a commander or a person on duty from performing his duties" and "fabricating rumours to mislead others during wartime", are also under review, the news agency said.

Officials had previously said that China would review the application of the death penalty, which applies to 55 offences, including fraud and illegal money-lending.

China guards the number of people executed every year as state secrets.

The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, which seeks the release of political prisoners in China, estimated that 2,400 people were executed in 2013. By comparison, 39 people were executed in 2013 in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The reduction in death penalty crimes, however, is not expected to greatly reduce the number of executions per year, scholars have said. 

The Communist Party, worried about rising social unrest and anger over land grabs, corruption and pollution unveiled legal reforms aimed at improving judicial independence at a key meeting last week.

The Party has stressed that it will remain in overall control of the judiciary, and despite the move to implement legal reforms, few analysts expect significant political change any time soon.