DEATH PENALTY: China Considers Cash for Clemency

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING , Jun 17 2007 (IPS) - Under pressure to reduce its huge number of annual executions as it prepares to host the 2008 Olympic games, China has been experimenting with commuting death penalties to life sentences in exchange for compensation. But the practice is proving contentious.

A string of cases in the southern province of Guangdong where convicted murderers were given amnesty in exchange for cash paid to the victims’ families created a storm of controversy earlier this year. Similar practices have also been reported in the coastal provinces of Shandong and Zhejiang.

The disclosures have sparked an intense debate on Internet forums about the price of human life in a country which is routinely criticised for executing more people annually than the rest of the world combined.

While impetus for reform of China’s capital punishment system has been growing in recent years, surveys indicate many Chinese continue to view the death penalty as an important crime deterrent.

“The fate of criminals now seems to be determined by the depth of their pockets,” lamented Le Lan, a teacher at the Southwest University for Nationalities, one of those who joined the public debate. “The seriousness of law has been destroyed, further undermining the public’s understanding of justice.”

Xu Shu, a factory worker from Shenzhen, agreed: “This is an insult to the law. Can money now buy a life? What can’t it buy?”

“The practices conform to the latest call from the Supreme People’s Court to ‘hand out fewer death penalties and do so prudently’,” Jiang Qinghan, a lawyer with the Shanghai Guangmao Law Firm wrote recently on the Internet forum of the China Daily newspaper. “If there is repentance and the criminal’s behaviour does not merit execution, why is it necessary to take a life?”

The dilemma faced by legal authorities is exemplified by the case of an elderly woman Deng Rongfen from Dongguan in Guangdong province, reported in the local newspaper Southern Weekend in March.

Deng’s only son and the sole breadwinner in a family of five was stabbed to death in May 2006. He had surprised three migrant workers robbing his family house. The perpetrators were all given death sentences.

But even as justice was achieved on paper, Deng’s family situation remained insolvent. Deng had no money or means to send her grandchildren to kindergarten or help her daughter-in-law raise them. The desperation of Deng’s circumstances eventually led to court-sanctioned negotiations between her and the accused and the arrangement of a civil compensation package in exchange for reduction in their sentences.

The judicial officials in Dongguan have defended the cash-for-amnesty move, saying the commuting of the death penalty is done only with the consent of the victim’s family and it is not tantamount to “redeeming crime with money”. They argue that with the lack of unified compensation system, the recompense received by the victims’ families can help relieve social strain, prevent numerous appeals and even curtail unrest.

“Some 90 percent of our criminal cases involve migrant workers and both offenders and victims are quite poor, ” Wang Chuanghui, a judicial officer with the Dongguan Intermediate People’s Court told the Southern Weekly.

Ironically, the publicising of the practice appears to have achieved an effect opposite to the one desired. It has ignited debates about social inequality at a time of deep divisions in Chinese society caused by mounting income disparity.

While the country’s headlong economic modernisation over the last 30 years has benefited many urbanities, people in the villages have remained on the fringes of China’s development, earning less than their city counterparts and lacking adequate education and health care.

“The poor crime victims have no option but to accept the money,” an online writer calling himself “Rule of Law” wrote recently on www.sina.com, one of China’s most popular news portals. “They are, to some extent, ‘coerced’ into compromise”. And as the country takes tentative steps towards reducing the number of executions, legal experts foresee more conflicts.

“Chinese people are traditionally used to punitive justice and believe in the death sentence as due punishment for serious crimes,” Zhou Guangquan, law professor at Beijing Qinghua University said at a round table on China’s compensation system organised by the Xinjingbao newspaper in Beijing. “Should the number of death sentences decline, we need an adequate system of relief for the victims’ families or we risk seeing people taking justice into their own hands.” China reported fewer executions in the first five months of 2007 after the country’s Supreme People’s Court regained its power to ratify or rescind death sentences on Jan. 1. The number of death sentences imposed by Beijing courts has dropped 10 percent, which is reflected by a similar trend across the country, Ni Shouming, the Court’s spokesperson told the English-language China Daily on June 8.

“The lower courts have to be more prudent now,” he was quoted as saying. “If a case is sent back for a retrial by the highest court, it not only means the final judgement is wrong, but also it is a matter of shame for the lower court.”

Centralising the right of final review by the Supreme People’s Court ends a 25-year-long practice of allowing lower courts to order executions. The practice has long been denounced by legal rights advocates for leading to arbitrary rulings by provincial judges and an excessively high number of death sentences.

What is more, a string of wrongful convictions concealed by investigators have come to light in recent years causing public outcry and adding pressure to revise the system.

Chinese authorities classify the number of court-ordered executions as a state secret. But Chinese legal experts believe the number of executions could be as high as 10,000 a year. More than 60 offences – including non-violent offences like corruption and tax evasion – are punishable by death.