Prisons in China - Death Penalty

Death Penalty

China retained the death penalty in the 1980s for certain serious crimes. The 1980 law required that death sentences be approved by the Supreme People's Court. This requirement was temporarily modified in 1981 to allow the higher people's courts of provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities to approve death sentences for murder, robbery, rape, bomb-throwing, arson, and sabotage. In 1983 this modification was made permanent. The death sentence was not imposed on anyone under eighteen years of age at the time of the crime nor "on a woman found to be pregnant during the trial." Criminals sentenced to death could be granted a stay of execution for two years, during which they might demonstrate their repentance and reform. In this case the sentence could be reduced. Mao Zedong was credited with having originated this idea, which some observers found cruel although it obviated many executions.

In 2004, Zhang Shiqiang, who was convicted of double murder and rape, became one of the first convicts to be killed in China's new collection of mobile execution chambers, commonly referred to as "death vans." This was part of the Chinese government's new plan to phase out firing squads for lethal injections.

China executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined in 2005, Amnesty International estimated there were at least 1,770 executions in China that year, and most of them were still by firing squad.

In 2006, the Chinese government reversed the previous modified death penalty requirement that was made permanent in 1983. The law was enacted on January 1, 2007, and required all death sentences be approved by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), effectively depriving the provincial people's courts of exercising the final say on the death sentence, allowing death penalties handed out by provincial courts to be reviewed and ratified by the SPC.