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China's Supreme People's Court has approved four death sentences since the court retrieved the right to review all death penalties from Jan. 1.

The four cases were:

-- Yu Maoge, who was sentenced to death by a Shanghai court for killing a taxi driver on Nov. 14, 2005.

-- Zhao Guiyong, who kidnapped and killed a ten-year-old boy in June 2006 and was sentenced to death by a court in east China's Jiangxi Province.

-- Liu Shilin, sentenced to death for raping two women, and killed one woman and injuring a girl in east China's Jiangsu Province in 2005 and 2006.

-- Li Shumu, who set fire to a house, killing a man and a woman in southeast China's Fujian Province on Dec. 7, 2005, and was sentenced to death by local court.

The Supreme People's Court has organized collegiate benches to review the cases and approved the original verdicts of the four cases, said a judge.

Last year, the Supreme People's Court announced it would review all death penalty rulings made by lower courts from this year, ending 24 years of lower courts issuing death sentences and conducting executions without the approval of the supreme court.

Under the new procedure, convicted criminals must not be executed without the approval of the supreme court.

If the supreme court approves the death penalty, they will be executed within seven days of local courts receiving the notice of the supreme court.

During the review process, the supreme court has also found cases lacking evidence, and returned them to lower courts for further inquiries, said the judge.

He would not say how many death sentences had been reviewed by the supreme court so far.

"The death penalty will be exercised more cautiously for only a small number of extremely serious offenders with hard evidence," Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, has said.

The reform has been viewed as an effective way to reduce the number of executions and miscarriages of justice.

(Xinhua News Agency March 20, 2007)