The Supreme People's Court (SPC) has reviewed sentences of prisoners on death row to ensure capital punishment is reserved only for offenders of "extremely serious crimes," SPC President Wang Shengjun said Sunday.
Delivering the SPC's work report at the first session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top judge noted courts nationwide have been cautious about executing prisoners sentenced to death.
In a separate work report, Cao Jianming, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), said a capital punishment supervision mechanism established to review cases also offered a stay of execution to criminals deemed harshly sentenced. Previously, only the SPC had such powers.
Cao's report, which did not reveal how many cases the SPP had reviewed over the past year, noted that the country's top prosecutor's office had appealed rulings in 24,178 criminal cases after finding errors over the past five years.
Neither work report revealed how many criminals were executed in China between 2008 and 2012.
The SPP's supervisory role in reviewing cases of prisoners on death row was enshrined in the latest amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law that took effect this year. Since 2007, all courts sentencing criminals to death have required SPC approval.
"The newly-added supervisory role abides by the spirit of the Constitution," Qu Xinjiu, a criminal law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.
The involvement of the top prosecutor's office indicates lawyers will probably be part of the review process, Qu added.
"This bodes well for the country's system of measuring punishment by tempering justice with leniency. The involvement of the SPP won't necessarily cause the process to drag because the more complicated the review is, the more carefully capital punishment will be considered," he said.
However, Liu Renwen, director of the Criminal Law Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted the absence of transparency in such cases means judicial explanations are "sorely needed to standardize the supervisory role and streamline the process."
The judicial system also faced an uphill battle against corruption during the past five years.
Cao noted in his work report that efforts had been made to weed out corruption in the country's officialdom, noting more than 30 officials at the ministerial level or higher were investigated for graft or other disciplinary violations between 2008 and 2012.
Prosecutors investigated about 13,000 officials at the county level or higher for disciplinary violations during the period, Cao said, adding that some 19,000 people offering bribes had been prosecuted.
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