SPC Moving Ahead With Death Penalty Review Reform

The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) is in the process of adding two new criminal tribunals and several hundred new judges as it prepares to take back the power to review all death penalty decisions, according to an article in the Chengdu Daily. The new tribunals will be located in Beijing. An SPC research division is compiling a draft implementation opinion that lays out the mechanics of the procedural reform. This opinion will reportedly be submitted to central Party officials for approval in the second half of this year. In October, related amendments to the Organic Law of the People’s Courts will be submitted for NPC Standing Committee deliberation. The article suggests that the SPC may take back the power to review all death sentences by next year.

While China’s Criminal Procedure Law requires the SPC to review all death sentences, the SPC has delegated this power in cases involving rape, murder, and certain other crimes to provincial high courts. Chinese experts have long argued that this delegation of power is unlawful. Some also express concerns that, because high courts serve as both courts of second instance and reviewing courts in many cases, the delegation system undermines protections against wrongful executions. According to official Chinese statistics cited in a Defense Lawyer Net article, provincial high courts review over 90 percent of the death sentences handed down in China. When the SPC does review death sentences, however, it overturns them in a large number of cases. Of the 300 cases the SPC reviewed in 2003, for example, it changed the original sentence or ordered a retrial in 118 cases.

A continuing domestic debate over the death penalty and its scope intensified over the past year, particularly after Chinese news media publicized accounts of wrongful conviction cases such as those of She Xianglin and Nie Shubin. Officials have also said they will work to ensure that it is applied fairly, and plan to refine death penalty review procedures and gradually reduce death sentences in favor of long-term imprisonment. The SPC has also called on lower courts to follow procedures strictly and evaluate exculpatory evidence carefully to prevent wrongful convictions.