Death penalty in china.pdf

Journal of Criminal JusticDeath penalty in China: The law and the practice Hong Lua,T, Lening Zhangb aDepartment of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5009, United States bDepartment of Behavioral Sciences, Saint Francis University, P. O. Box 600, Loretto, PA 15940-0600, United StatesAbstract China is a nation that carries out the death penalty with a broad scope in its transition to a market economy. The present study described and analyzed the legal concept and practice of the death penalty in China in a comparative context. It presented an overview of the Chinese legal tradition of the death penalty, the legal development of the death penalty since the Chinese Communists took power, and the current practice of the death penalty in China. It represented an attempt to offer a research- based understanding of the capital punishment in a nation that was experiencing significant change and transformation since the early 1980s. D 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Introduction The death penalty is a major concern in the legal and humanitarian fields. Information about the death penalty in China was limited and studies on the death penalty in China were relatively rare. Since the economic reforms and the bopen doorQ policy instigated in the early 1980s, increasing attention was given to the death penalty in China. The current study represented an attempt to describe and explain the law and practice of the death penalty in China from a historical, political, social, and cultural perspective. It focused on the recent legal development on the death penalty with discussions of the pertinent clauses stipulated in the 1997 Criminal Law and 1996 Criminal Procedural Law. The analysis drew upon several sources including the 1979 Chinese Criminal Law, the 1997 Criminal Law, the 1996 Criminal Procedural Law, the 1996 Amnesty Interna- tional death penalty log, a survey of 520 published death penalty cases from 1984 to 2000 in China (see Appendix A for a