Feisty Aphrodite Archives
Will the Chinese People Choose the Death Penalty?
The following is from the article written by Antoaneta Bezlova, published by Inter Press Service:
When China’s newly appointed top judge suggested recently that death penalties meted out in the country should adhere to popular will, many were outraged.
From those who shuddered recalling the pandemonium of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when gangs of teenagers administered ‘people’s will’ by beating up their teachers on the streets to those who foresaw rows of corrupt officials being lined up and shot on the strength of prevailing public opinion, everybody had a word to say against judge Wang Shengjun’s suggestion.
"China’s legal system is still immature and courts mustn’t blindly cater to popular will by becoming its rubber stamps," said Zhang Jianwei, legal expert at Qinghua University in Beijing. "We should remember the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. All those public executions carried out by the masses made the calamity even worse. We have plenty of historical evidence to believe that public will tends to favour harsher punishments."
Lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan said China was engaged in an intense battle against corruption and if public opinion was taken as basis for judging corrupt officials there would be plenty of death sentences. "The irony is that in China public opinion is almost never a factor in trying corruption cases," he says. "More often than not corrupt officials are given lenient sentences in belief of their repentance, while other criminal cases where public opinion is fiercely divided are resolved with the death penalty."
By suggesting that popular will should be a factor in carrying out death sentences, top judge Wang Shengjun had only voiced the desire of certain legal officials and experts here to reform China’s much criticised death penalty system. But the uproar that ensued sheds light on the hurdles the reform movement needs to overcome.
Court officials and legal experts contend that the Chinese people commonly believe in retribution as "an eye for an eye and a life for a life".
"I believe the principal of adherence to the popular will raised by the top judge refers only to this public belief," suggests legal researcher Xie Pengcheng. "Sometimes nothing but the death penalty can placate people’s anger".
Rights groups say China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined. The country’s penal system has been denounced for putting people to death summarily, meting out wrongful sentences and keeping the numbers of executed secret.
Since last year though, China has taken several strides forward toward reform. In January the Supreme Court took back its power of final approval on death penalties. This power was relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s.
The change has led to decline in the numbers of people executed, according to China’s legal authorities. The Supreme Court rejected 15 percent of all death sentences handed down by lower courts in 2007 due to a lack of evidence, injustices and illegal court procedures.
Read the entire story here.
