China's top judge and president of the Supreme People's Court
(SPC) Xiao Yang reaffirmed in Beijing Thursday that the SPC will
withdraw the death sentence review power in 2006.
A SPC source disclosed that new criminal courts have been
established for handling death sentence reviews. The SPC is
selecting qualified judges nationwide to take charge of the
work.
China's 1979 edition of the Criminal Procedural Law specified
that all death sentences with immediate execution must be reviewed
by the SPC. However, in a bid to strike hard at crime, the people's
court organizational law, promulgated in 1983, made it possible for
some death sentences with immediate execution to be reviewed by the
provincial higher people's court.
Since then, facts show that allowing provincial higher people's
courts to review death sentences results in inconsistency and
injustice.
When addressing a national conference attended by heads of
courts at the provincial level, Xiao also urged courts to open
court sessions when hearing death sentence cases in second
instance, to speed up trial supervision reform, to unify judicial
adjudication yardsticks and to further improve the juror system and
judicial democracy.
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(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2006)
