Image via WikipediaChina may drop death penalty for economic crimes...
BEIJING – China, which executes more people each year than any other country, said Monday it is considering dropping capital punishment for economic crimes.
A draft amendment to the country's criminal code proposes cutting 13 "economy-related, non-violent offenses" from the list of 68 crimes punishable by the death penalty, the official Xinhua New Agency said.
International rights groups have criticized China for its heavy use of the death penalty, saying it is excessive.
It is not known when the draft will become law. Xinhua said it was submitted for a first reading to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. A draft usually has two or three readings before it is voted on.
The website of the NPC confirmed the draft is being considered but did not give any details.
Xinhua said the crimes to be dropped from the list of those punishable by death included carrying out fraudulent activities with financial bills and letters of credit, and forging and selling invoices to avoid taxes. Others included smuggling cultural relics and precious metals such as gold out of the country.
It quoted Li Shishi, director of legislative affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, as saying that because of China's economic development, dropping the death penalty from some economic-related crimes would not hurt social stability or public security.
In recent years China has made several changes to how it decides and carries out the death penalty.
In May, new rules were issued saying evidence obtained through torture and threats cannot be used in criminal prosecutions and said such evidence would be thrown out in death penalty cases that are under appeal.
Those new regulations made it clear that evidence with unclear origins, confessions obtained through torture, and testimony acquired through violence and threats are invalid. It was the first time Beijing had explicitly stated that evidence obtained under torture or duress was illegal and inadmissible in court.
The rulings are important for death penalty cases, where a flawed system has led to the deaths of several criminal suspects by torture in detention centers.
In 2008, China's top court said about 15 percent of death sentence verdicts by lower courts were found to have problems, the official China Daily newspaper reported in May.
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On the Net: http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/xinwen/syxw/2010-08/16/content_1587905.htm (in Chinese)
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