THE HIGHEST court in China, a country which executes more people than any other, has called for the death penalty to be used less often and for only the most serious criminal cases.
The Supreme People’s Court, which reviews all death sentences from lower courts before they are carried out, will revise legislation to cut down the number of death sentences every year to “an extremely small number” and focus on commuting sentences to life in prison for some criminals who show good behaviour, a senior court official told the Legal Daily newspaper.
“A policy of strictly controlling and being cautious to use the death penalty ... requires judicial departments to use as few death penalties as possible, meaning you don’t kill those who you don’t have to kill,” Zhang Jun, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court.
In January 2007, the Supreme People’s Court regained the power of final approval of death penalties, devolved to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and it promised to apply the ultimate punishment only to “those who have committed extremely serious or heinous crimes that lead to grave social consequences”.
China has no plans to abolish capital punishment, which is supported as a deterrent to serious crime.
“As it is impossible for the country to abolish capital punishment under current realities and social security conditions, it is an important effort to strictly control the application of the penalty by judicial organs,” Mr Zhang said.
Earlier this year Amnesty International reported that China sentenced 7,000 people to be executed last year and put at least 1,718 people to death. The penalty is used even for non-violent crimes such as corruption or tax evasion.
The death penalty can exceptionally be dispensed with in cases like disputes between family members or neighbours, where compensation is agreed or if the criminal is forgiven by the family of those injured.
The China Daily reported that the Supreme People’s Court overturned 15 per cent of death sentences handed down in 2007 and 10 per cent in 2008.
It pointed to a decision by the court last week that overturned a death sentence imposed on a man who killed his lover when he found out she was having an affair. The court considered the woman was also partly responsible and that the man had shown regret and paid compensation to the victim’s family. The case did not have any social impact, it said.