Possible Death Penalty Cut Triggers Discussion

Capital punishment has been brought to the fore in China with the latest discussions on draft amendments to the Criminal Law. Whatever the results, experts agree that death penalty will still be an alternative in China for the time being.

Prof. Liu Renwen, director of the Department of Criminal Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said, "Death penalty is now still considered punishment well deserved for extremely severe crimes in China. People can't accept its abolishment."

"We did a survey a few years ago, in which nearly 90 percent of the respondents were opposed to abolishing capital punishment," Prof. Liu said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

In early 2003, www.sina.com, a major news portal in China conducted a survey among netizens, soliciting their views on capital punishment. Among 28,670 who responded, 67 percent were for death penalty. Some 22 percent were against, preferring it to be scaled down. Only 11 percent thought its abolishment necessary.

Yuan Bin, associate professor with the College for Criminal Law Science at Beijing Normal University, believes the general public still has "a psychological dependence on capital punishment."

According to Yuan, who has been closely following public opinion on death penalty for years, there have been changes in people's views towards capital punishment.

"Chinese people are not staunch supporters for death penalty as they were before," Yuan said. "Some people favor longer prison terms, or life imprisonment as replacements. And most Chinese are positive about the trend of ultimately throwing away death penalty."

In terms of China's legal system, Yuan said, "We are not fully prepared for the ultimate abolishment of capital punishment as there are not yet any replacement accepted by most people in China."

Death penalty has a long history in China, with the earliest available record dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1600 B.C.-1046 B.C.). People justified capital punishment on the grounds of retribution and deterrence.

"Whether a country chooses to keep the death penalty should be decided with reference to its own national circumstances," said Prof. Liu.

Nonetheless, China has made great changes concerning capital punishment in recent years.

In June, the Supreme People's Court of China issued regulations banning the use of evidences obtained through torture and threats in criminal courts.

In January 2007, the supreme court took back the power of reviewing all death penalty decisions made by lower courts after province-level higher courts drew fire amid reports on miscarriage of justice.

In the meantime, lethal injections were also replacing the traditional method of execution by gunshot, which had been the only lawful execution method until 1996, when the amended Criminal Procedural Law added lethal injection as an alternative.

In another step forward, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or the country's top legislature, gathered last week in Beijing, deliberating proposals to drop death penalties for 13 non-violent economic crimes.

There will be several readings before the proposals become amendments to the Criminal Law. If consensus is reached, 19 percent of the current 68 offences punishable by death penalty would be scrapped.

"This is a landmark on our way to restricting capital punishment sentences until abolishing them for good," said associate professor Yuan of the Beijing Normal University.

While acknowledging the eighth amendments to the Criminal Law as major efforts in bringing down the number of executions in China, some experts believe that a fair justice in criminal procedures is as important as cutting down death numbers.

Prof. Jerome Cohen, of the New York University School of Law, said in a telephone interview with Xinhua, "In every country, most people like capital punishment unless it happens to them."

He said it's important "to improve the procedures for trying and convicting these people, so that you have a fairer and more accurate process, and that is expected to reduce the number of people executed."

"You have to improve the law, and then you have to really improve the implementation," said Cohen, a long-time researcher on China laws.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2010)