Death Penalty in China after the Ninth Amendment: Legislatively Abolishing and Judicially Limiting

Huang G

doi:10.15744/2348-9804.4.303

Abstract

“The death penalty is like no other punishment. It is ultimate, most consequential and totally irreversible penalty”, which thus causes it to always be on the list of the hottest topics among Chinese criminal law circles and even in the social public discourse [1]. Likewise, it has also become a significant focus of global society in terms of the construction of rule of law and the development of human rights in China. The reform of the death penalty system has already become the most significant area of criminal punishment reform in China in recent years. ISSN: 2348-9804

Highlights

This paper supplies some possible approaches to death penalty reform in China based on analyzing the reforms attempted by the Ninth Amendment
Another further step of death penalty reform is that the Ninth Amendment to Criminal Law of P.R.C (Hereinafter, the Ninth Amendment) was adopted on August 29th, 2015, which abolished death penalty for 9 crimes and reformed the relevant death penalty system
The Vice-Chairmen of Law Committee of the National People’s Congress of P.R.C., Li Shishi, when he introduced the Explanations for the Draft of the Ninth Amendment to Criminal Law of P.R.C. said that “since the death penalty for 13 economic and non-violent crimes was abolished by the Eighth Amendment in 2011, the general security situation of China society is within a controllable range and the number of serious crimes is stable with a slight decline

Summary

Introduction

All these reforms include the following: 1) it has further reduced the amount of crimes punishable by death stipulated by specific provisions of Penal Code; 2) it has further improved the executive conditions of which the suspension was revoked and imposed immediate execution, which is a reform of great significance for China’s present death penalty system.

Results

Conclusion