High court to order provinces to retry death sentences
February 28, 2007 | BY
clpstaffChina's Supreme People's Court (SPC) will not change sentences in death penalty cases, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. Instead, if it finds errors…
China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) will not change sentences in death penalty cases, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. Instead, if it finds errors in judgements, it will send cases back to the provincial courts for retrial.
“The new regulation will guarantee that death sentences are handed out with caution by ordering retrials, which will also improve the efficiency of SPC death penalty reviews,” a SPC spokesman told Xinhua in February.
The SPC has had the ability to review death penalty cases since January 1 2007. It can ratify death sentences, change them or order a retrial.
One of the first cases to fall under the new regulation involved a request by the widow of executed Shaanxi mass murderer Qiu Xinghua. She had asked the court to conduct a postmortem psychiatric evaluation of her husband, who was executed on December 28 2006, just days before the SPC began reviewing death penalty cases. The SPC sent the case back to the Shaanxi Higher People's Court for review.
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