Supreme court eases attorney participation in death sentence review

The Supreme People's Court (SPC) issued a protocol to facilitate the participation of defense lawyers when reviewing a death sentence.

According to the document, if a defense lawyer requests a meeting with the judge to express the defendant's opinion about a death sentence, the judge should arrange the meeting promptly.

The meeting can be held at the SPC office in Beijing or at a local court house when the judge is visiting the defendant.

The content of the meeting will be logged into a transcript and it will be signed by the lawyer. If the condition allows, the meeting will be recorded or videotaped, according to the document.

Defense lawyers are allowed to read and copy legal documents of the cases at the SPC office.

The SPC verdict will be delivered to defense lawyers within five days after it is announced.

The protocol is considered part of the SPC's efforts to protect defendants' rights and adopt a more prudent attitude toward using death penalties.

The country's judicial system was alerted of wrongful convictions by the case of a teenager named Huugjilt in Inner Mongolia, who was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder, which led to his execution in 1996. In December 2014 a higher court in Inner Mongolia ruled that Huugjilt was innocent.

Last Thursday, top justice Zhou Qiang reiterated the criteria for issuing capital punishment should be strictly observed so as to ensure "the penalty is only used on an extremely few convicts whose crimes are extremely serious".