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China Aims to Reduce Execution Rate
Tuesday, Chinese lawmakers adopted new death penalty legislation by which all death sentences must be approved by China's Supreme People's Court. The death penalty has long been a vital weapon in the Chinese government's crime-fighting arsenal. However in the last few years, human rights groups, foreign governments and respected Chinese policymakers have pushed for more discretion regarding the death penalty. In China, execution is no big thing the way it is in America or Europe. According to a New York Times piece Wednesday, China executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined. And while China does not release an official number of executions, Amnesty International estimates that in 2005, over 1,770 prisoners were put to death in China, constituting over 80% of all the world's executions. In the same year, the United States, known for its immoderate use of capital punishment, executed sixty. The pressure on China to reduce its executions stems from recent cases in which people were found to be innocent after they had been executed, cases in which the accused had been executed for murder and the "murder victim" was found to still be alive (oops), and cases in which torture led to phony confessions of guilt. Even Xinhua, the state-sponsored news agency admitted yesterday:

The practice of provincial courts handling both death sentence appeals and conducting final reviews began to encounter increasing criticism in recent years for causing miscarriages of justice. Since 2005, China's media have exposed a series of errors in death sentence cases and criticized courts for lack of caution in meting out capital punishment.

This is about as apologetic as the government will get about anything. In a country with 68 capital crimes on the books, it becomes increasingly necessary to ensure that death sentences are not handed out like parking tickets. Tuesday's legislation allows criminals increased opportunity for appeal and more protection against corruption and wrongful decisions. Xinhua estimates the rate of execution will drop by 30% and called the amendment, "the most important reform of capital punishment in China in more than two decades."

•NYT: China Acts To Reduce Executions
•Xinhua: China Revises Law