An empirical study of the application of death penalty

Abstract

本文以最高法院示范性案例中的全部“死罪”案例为样本进行法律解释学的实证 研究，发现了犯罪中是否构成死罪、死罪中是否适用死刑、死刑中是否立即执行的一 些重要不同，并根据这些发现认为，法律解释既是规范判断又是自主判断，应尽可能 提高法律本身的明确性以呼唤死刑适用更大程度上向规范层面的回归。 * This article forms part of the phased findings of the project “An Empirical Study of Justice in Criminal Law,” undertaken by the author with the support of the National Social Sciences Program. The author would like to take this opportunity to thank Chen Hao and other researchers from the Empirical Legal Research Institute of Peking University for their immense assistance with the process of data collecting and sorting. 关键词: 死罪阶梯 死刑 法律解释 实证研究 This empirical study of legal interpretation takes as its sample all “capital crimes” from among the Supreme Court's exemplary cases. The study finds significant variations in which crimes are construed as being capital crimes, which capital crimes carry the death penalty, and whether the death sentence is carried out immediately. Based on these findings, the author concludes that legal interpretation involves both normative and autonomous judgments, and that the law itself should be clarified to the maximum extent possible so as to bring about a greater degree of standardization in the application of the death penalty.