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Law experts advise less use of death penalty
China should consider using the death penalty less widely for corruption cases and abolishing it altogether for non-violent crimes, the China News Service on Tuesday quoted legal experts as saying. Experts are now calling for a "kill fewer, kill carefully" policy towards suspects of non-violent crimes, the CNS said. "The death penalty undoubtedly has a deterrent effect on graft and bribe-taking, but we must not exaggerate this deterring power," Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences law professor Xiao Zhonghua said in the CNS article. "It's not as if the more extreme the punishment the more effective it is at preventing crimes," he said. Corruption has surged since economic reforms were introduced in the late 1970s, and the government in recent years has taken actions to try to build a clean government. In July, for example, a former manager of several state-owned firms was executed for embezzling more than 20 million yuan (US$2.4 million). Certain non-violent crimes that threaten the safety of the country or the interest of national defence should still carry the death sentence, Zhao Bingzhi, director of the Renmin University of China Criminal Law Research Center, said in the article. "However, for other non-violent crimes, we should consider gradually abolishing the death penalty." Ruan Qilin, professor of law at the Chinese Politics and Law University said it was hard to prove the deterrent effect of the death penalty for corruption, and even more difficult to end executions in China. "You cannot prove its effectiveness, that's undeniable. There isn't a definite deterrent effect," he said. Currently, 68 crimes can bring the death penalty in China and most are non-violent, including smuggling, producing forged currency, financial fraud, theft from ancient tombs and organising prostitution, the report said. In March, the State Supreme Court said it was considering a plan to secure for itself sole rights to review death sentence cases, stripping the lower provincial courts of the power. Officials said this would simplify an irregular process. Lower courts have been criticised for lack of professionalism and standardisation in meting out the ultimate penalty. Before a Criminal Code revision in 1997, people could be executed for crimes such as hooliganism and theft. "This is playing down the value of human life," the CNS report said. "In fact, it's using the value of material property to judge the value of human life." "Now we can first consider what are appropriate circumstances for the death penalty in lawmaking and administration, then gradually make a transition to abolishing the death penalty," the China News Service said. |
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