Death sentence review just and fair
11/3/2008 11:30
China's top judge, Xiao Yang, said since the Supreme People's Court
revoked the power of reviewing death sentences from provincial courts on January
1 last year, capital punishment has been "strictly, cautiously and fairly" meted
out to a small number of serious criminal offenders in the nation.
"The
transition work has been smooth, orderly and trials of death sentence cases
normal," Xiao, president of the Supreme People's Court and chief justice, said
in his work report to the annual parliamentary session.
Xiao said the SPC
has in the past year improved the procedure for second instance trials of death
sentence cases and the procedure for the final review of death penalty with
unified criteria applied.
"The SPC has been working to ensure that
capital punishment only applies to the very few number of felons who committed
extremely serious, atrocious crimes that lead to grave social consequences,"
Xiao told the legislators.
Xiao did not reveal how many people were
executed last year. However, presiding judge of the SPC's First Criminal Law
Court Huang Ermei said in a recent media interview that the supreme court
rejected 15 percent of death sentences for various reasons including facts that
needed clarifying, lack of evidence and procedure faults.
Rozi Ismail,
president of the higher people's court of the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region, told Xinhua that immediate executions after sentences in the
region were reduced by half last year compared with 2006. The SPC taking back
the power of reviewing death sentences is a major reform in China's criminal
justice system, which provides procedural guarantees for preventing misjudged
cases and safeguarding offenders' legal rights, said the Xinjiang
judge.
Legal professionals have observed that with the resumption of the
SPC reviewing death sentences, local courts have already become more cautious in
issuing death orders. The Chinese justice community agreed that the death
sentence was necessary for the country to serve as a powerful
deterrent.
Xinhua
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