The death penalty in contemporary China

Abstract

The Death Penalty Contemporary China, by Susan Trevaskes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. x + 301 pp. US$138.00/£55.00 (hardcover).In The Death Penalty Contemporary China, Susan Trevaskes presents a thoughtful, nuanced account of the complex political and legal forces behind the use of the death penalty, particularly during the period from 1980 to 2011. This exceptional book goes beyond one-dimensional critiques that only emphasize the large number of executions. Widely recognized reports that China executes more people each year than any other country certainly deserve scrutiny. Yet numbers alone fail to capture the intricate contours of the death penalty debate within China. Trevaskes masterfully makes this debate accessible to an international audience.The book shows how drive law and practice. Trevaskes elegantly explains the shifting use of the death penalty within the broader context of changing criminal justice policy and the Chinese Communist Party's unceasing dominance shaping that policy. In short, in China, the death penalty is a creature of politics (p. 223).Trevaskes elaborates the long-standing dynamic between two death-penalty templates: kill many and kill fewer. She details how savvy efforts by the former president of the Supreme People's Court, Xiao Yang, and other reformers gradually diminished the powerful policy of y anda (or striking hard at crime) and enabled the gentler policy of balancing leniency and severity to take root. Trevaskes further provides insights into why a shift to a less reform-minded agenda by the highest echelons of power nonetheless did not lead to a resurgence of kill many rhetoric following Xiao Yang's retirement 2008. Instead, the number of executions reportedly continues to decline, largely through an expansive use of sihuan (suspended death sentences). Despite the triumph of the kill fewer policy, the book serves as a reminder that the debate China regarding the death penalty has not focused on whether to abolish the death penalty, but rather on how it should be used. Nor does abolition appear feasible the foreseeable future. The death penalty remains a powerful instrument of punishment and, as Trevaskes succinctly cautions, [t]he party is unlikely ever to let go (p. 236).Beyond the overarching political dimensions, Trevaskes includes helpful information on the legal nuts and bolts of how the death penalty is applied. She addresses the crimes for which the death penalty is a prevalent punishment, the impact of weak evidentiary rules on capital cases, and the reasons that ongoing discussions China regarding the creation of national sentencing guidelines have failed to bear fruit. She integrates a wide range of scholarly views from Chinese and foreign authors, as well as case studies to illustrate the challenges and flaws China's capital punishment scheme. In one memorable vignette, an appellate court reduced a woman's sentence for poisoning her husband from immediate execution to a suspended death sentence, based on her argument that her goal was merely to stop her husband from visiting prostitutes by incapacitating him sexually-the instructions for the rat poison that she used explained that it worked by shutting down the rat's sex organs (p. …