A new require­ment that every death sen­tence be reviewed and approved by China’s high­est court has result­ed in a sharp decline in exe­cu­tions there. A spokesman for the Supreme People’s Court in China said that low­er courts are report­ing a 10% drop in exe­cu­tions dur­ing the first five months of 2007. Human rights experts esti­mate that China exe­cutes 10,000 — 15,000 peo­ple each year, more than the rest of the world com­bined, but offi­cials do not release spe­cif­ic num­bers to the pub­lic.

In recent years, cas­es of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions have sparked pub­lic out­rage about exe­cu­tions in China, and many have urged the gov­ern­ment to take steps that would improve the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the nation’s judi­cial sys­tem. Legal schol­ars pre­dict that the new rule requir­ing the Supreme People’s Court to con­duct a final review of each death penal­ty case could even­tu­al­ly cause exe­cu­tions to drop by 20 to 30 per­cent. Xiao Yang, chief jus­tice of the People’s Supreme Court, has said, ​“A case involv­ing a human life is a mat­ter of vital impor­tance.”

Human rights activists are encour­aged by the declin­ing num­ber of exe­cu­tions and say that it con­tin­ues a trend that actu­al­ly began six years ago when China was award­ed the 2008 Olympic games. Some believe that exe­cu­tions have dropped by 40% since that time.

(International Herald Tribune, June 8, 2007). See International. Death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions have also sharply declined in the U.S. dur­ing this same peri­od. See DPIC’s lat­est report, ​“A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty.”

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