According to a statement posted this week on the court website of the city of Wenzhou—known for its thriving private sector and informal banking networks—39-year old Lin Haiyan started soliciting funds in 2007, promising investors high returns at low risk. The scheme unraveled in October 2011, with Ms. Lin owing her private backers 428 million yuan, it said.

[…] Informal sources of credit have long been the lifeblood of China’s small private firms that typically can’t access loans or other forms of finances from the country’s formal financial institutions. But gathering funds to invest without regulatory approval is a legal gray area, and authorities sometimes crack down hard when investors lose money.

[…] As of the end of April, 1,449 people had been “seriously punished”–a designation that includes the death penalty and more than five years imprisonment—for illegal fundraising since 2011, said Miao Youshui, a senior judge on the People’s Supreme Court, China’s highest judicial body, at a recent news conference. In total, 4,170 people were convicted over the same period for similar economic crimes, he said. [Source]

Lin’s case quickly attracted comparison with that of Wu Ying, a young entrepreneur from Zhejiang whose death sentence was effectively reduced to life imprisonment last year following a public backlash. Wu’s supporters argued that capital punishment would have been disproportionate to her non-violent crime, but this principle is unevenly accepted: execution of corrupt officials, like that of violent offenders, enjoys considerable public support in China.

Amnesty International reported in April that China remains the clear world leader in executions, with thousands believed to have been carried out last year. The exact number is deemed a state secret.

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Post tags: capital punishment, death penalty, execution, fraud, underground bank, wenzhou, Wu Ying
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Only 21 of the world’s countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012 – the same number as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier in 2003.

In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide, two more than in 2011. At least 1,722 newly imposed death sentences in 58 countries could be confirmed, compared to 1,923 in 63 countries the year before.

But these figures do not include the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes were carried out in China, where the numbers are kept secret.

China aside, the Amnesty International report notes that the Asia Pacific region as a whole saw “disappointing setbacks” towards their goal of global abolishment: India saw its first execution since 2004, Japan executed seven people after a nearly two-year hiatus, and Pakistan also resumed use of  the death penalty. From The Guardian:

[...A] number of countries in Asia Pacific that had not carried executions for a number of years did so in 2012, such as India, which executed one person, Japan seven, Pakistan one and Gambia nine.

“The regression we saw in some countries this year was disappointing, but it does not reverse the worldwide trend against using the death penalty. In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general.

The Supreme People’s Court claims that use of the death penalty in China has significantly decreased since a regulation was enacted in 2007 requiring each case to be reviewed individually, and human rights advocacy group Dui Hua’s estimates support that assertion, showing 6,500 in 2007 and 4,000 in 2011. While enforced regulation may continue to reduce the use of capital punishment in China, The South China Morning Post quotes a criminal law expert who believes that shifting public support will be more difficult:

Hao Xingwang, a criminal law expert at Beijing’s Renmin University, believed that the number of executions would likely continue to fall as Beijing tightens its regulations. Public support for the death penalty, however, would remain strong for some years, he said.

“Most Chinese people believe the death penalty is necessary, but don’t really understand the risks and drawbacks. The concept of an eye-for-an-eye has been well established since ancient times and will take a long time to change,” Hao said.

Also see infographics and a concise data summary of the Amnesty International report, via The Guardian. For more on the death penalty in China, see prior CDT coverage.

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Post tags: Amnesty International, death penalty, execution, legal system
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Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

Though a rumored live broadcast of the actual executions failed to materialize, the TV coverage attracted heavy criticism. “It’s hard to see how that spectacle doesn’t violate [the] prohibition on parading condemned in the streets,” tweeted human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig, referring to a 1984 ban introduced to avoid unfavorable foreign media coverage. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented that China had “just wiped away any perception that it was making progress on the death penalty issue.” Within China, reactions to the broadcast were deeply polarized. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

At Bloomberg World View, Adam Minter described the spectacle as a “graphic extension” of a broader political strategy:

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

China’s Global Times recently revealed that authorities had considered killing Naw Kham with a drone strike instead of capturing him. See more on China’s drone programs, and more on the death penalty in China, via CDT.

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Post tags: CCTV, death penalty, diplomacy, drug trafficking, execution, Golden Triangle, human rights watch, Japan, legal system, Mao era, Mekong river, murders, Murong Xuecun, Myanmar, Southeast Asia, territorial disputes, thailand
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Supporters say a reprieve for Li Yan would send the message that authorities are serious about confronting domestic violence. The 41-year-old from Sichuan had repeatedly begged for protection from her spouse.

According to Amnesty International, Li’s husband, Tan Yong, stubbed out cigarettes on her face, cut off part of her finger and locked her out on the balcony of their home in wintertime while she was only partially clothed.

She killed him in November 2010 by repeatedly hitting him over the head with an airgun to stop him from beating her. More than 100 legal experts and academics have signed an open letter calling for her sentence to be commuted.

The supreme people’s court has reportedly upheld Li’s death sentence, but her lawyer, Guo Jianmei, a well-known women’s rights advocate, said the defence team had not received formal notification. “Even if there is only a little hope, we want to fight for her to have a chance to live,” she said. “She killed her husband in fear that her life was seriously threatened.”

According to the South China Morning Post, more than 400 lawyers and women’s rights activists have called for a re-examination of the case against Li Yan in a petition sent to the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate:

Teng Biao, director of China Against Death Penalty who launched the petition campaign, said they were calling on the judiciary to re-examine the domestic violence that led to the killing and take it into full account in a new decision showing due respect for human life.

He said the death sentence was flawed because it failed to take account of complaints Li had lodged with the local women’s federation and statements she gave to police in the months before the killing, as well as testimony from her neighbours, which all pointed to her having been a victim of domestic violence since the couple married about two years prior to the fatal incident.

“She had no excuse to kill her husband, but she’s nothing like a cold-blooded killer who planned the killing,” Teng said.

Human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig translated an article by lawyer Zhang Peihong in which he argued that there are sufficient legal grounds to reconsider Li’s punishment.

Li’s case has raised concerns about the criminal treatment of abused women who injure or kill their spouses in self-defense. The New York Times reports on the extent of the problem:

Women’s jails are filled with women who have injured or killed abusive husbands, according to the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, citing studies by local women’s federations and scholars. They account for 60 percent of inmates in one jail in Anshan, in Liaoning Province, and 80 percent of women serving heavy sentences in a jail in Fuzhou, in Fujian Province.

In a study by Xing Hongmei of China Women’s University, of 121 female inmates in a Sichuan jail who were serving time for attacking or killing abusive partners, 71 were originally sentenced to life in prison or to death (sometimes commuted, delayed or overturned on appeal), and 28 more were sentenced to at least 10 years. This means more than 80 percent received the heaviest possible sentences for murder or bodily harm, the study said.

For months before she killed Mr. Tan, Ms. Li sought help from the authorities in Anyue County, in Sichuan Province, where they lived, her brother said.

“She telephoned the police in, I think, May 2010, after a beating, but they said it was an affair between married people and hung up,” he said.

Women’s rights advocates have long fought for a domestic violence law to protect abused women. With a draft law now in the works, 12,000 people have signed a petition to the National People’s Congress which calls for transparency in the drafting process. From the New York Times blog:

Fed up with being excluded from the decision-making process, Chinese feminists not only want a law against domestic violence, they also want to know exactly what’s going into it, in a new push for accountability from their opaque government. The petition, “Asking for Openness and Transparency in the Process of the Anti-Domestic Violence Law,” spells that out.

Bai Fei, a university student from Shanghai, is one of three women behind the petition. Signatures were gathered online, the Yunnan Information News reported.

Ms. Bai grew up in a family where her father beat her mother. She wanted to know if the new law would help people like her mother, the newspaper wrote.

“When the law comes out, will my mother be able to get legal protection?” asked Ms. Bai. “What level of protection will the law afford her? If I can’t know what’s going into it, I won’t feel at all safe.”

Domestic violence was thrust into the national spotlight last year when the American wife of celebrity English teacher Li Yang posted gruesome photos on weibo of her injuries from his abuse.

Read more about domestic violence in China.

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Post tags: crime, death penalty, domestic violence, women's rights
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When asked by reporters, a spokesman for Guizhou Intermediate Court said: “Are you asking about Bo Xilai case? This is rumour, we have never received this case.”

The China-run Ta Kung Pao newspaper said on its website that Bo’s trial would start on Monday in the southern city of Guiyang and last three days. It cited “well-informed Beijing sources”, but gave no details.

[…] One of Bo’s lawyers, Li Guifang, declined to comment when reached by telephone. Reporters were unable to reach his second lawyer, Wang Zhaofeng, despite repeated telephone calls.

[…] Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who opposed Wang Lijun and Bo for mounting a sweeping crackdown on foes in the name of fighting organised crime, said he also thought it was possible for a Monday hearing.

“I would only say it’s possible, though not totally certain,” Li said.

Comments about Bo’s likely fate from Li Jingtian, executive vice president of the Central Party School, were similarly inconclusive. From Tom Orlik and Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal:

“We have always had severe punishment for corrupt officials,” Mr. Li said during the interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, in response to a question about the fate of Mr. Bo. Such interviews are rare for senior party officials.

He cited the examples of Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, two leaders in the party’s early days who were executed in the 1950s following accusations of embezzlement and other crimes in one of the party’s first anticorruption campaigns.

[…] Mr. Li’s comments don’t mean Mr. Bo is likely to face execution if found guilty. While he cited the case of another execution—that of Cheng Kejie, a former top legislator who was executed in 2000—he also cited the case of Chen Xitong, a former party chief of Beijing convicted on corruption charges in 1998 but released from prison on medical parole in 2006. He also named Chen Liangyu, the former party secretary of Shanghai who was dismissed in 2006 and later sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges.

See more on the Bo case to date, some of it more certain than the above, via CDT.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Central Party School, Chen Liangyu, Chen Xitong, corrupt officials, corruption, Davos, death penalty, embezzlement, execution, Guizhou, Li Guifang, Li Zhuang, prison, trials, Wang Lijun, Wang Zhaofeng, World Economic Forum
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Nearly 1.5 million people in China need organ transplants each year, but only 10,000 can get one, according to China’s Health Ministry. Many of those organs are harvested from executed criminals.

Rights groups have accused China of harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their consent – something that Beijing denies.

A trial program has led to more than 1,200 voluntary organ donations since March 2010, China’s official Xinhua news agency cited vice minister of health Huang Jiefu as saying.

When expanded, the ministry’s program, established with the Red Cross Society of China, will mean “less reliance on the use of organ donations from prisoners that have been sentenced to death”, Xinhua said.

Xinhua News has more on the new program and the government’s efforts to reduce its reliance on donations from condemned prisoners:

According to a report by chinanews.com, the project, jointly established by the ministry and the Red Cross Society of China, resulted in more than 100 cases being performed in Guangdong. The province had the most number of donations.

In 2007, China’s State Council, or the Cabinet, issued its first regulations on transplants, banning organizations and individuals from trading human organs.

The 2011 amendments to China’s Criminal Law also introduced three clauses dedicated to organ-related crimes, under which convicted organizers of organ trafficking activities may face fines or prison terms of more than five years.

Under the law, criminals convicted of “forced organ removal, forced organ donation or organ removal from juveniles” could face punishment for homicide.

See also CDT coverage on the issue, one of China’s most infamous human rights violations, and an article from World Affairs from earlier this year which calls out China’s “Organ Donation Nightmare.”

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Ministry of Health, organ harvesting, organ trafficking, organ transplants
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The country’s Ministry of Health has commissioned the Red Cross Society of China to run the nation’s organ donation system and will work with the organization to ensure that all organ procurement and transplantation is done legally, said Wang Haibo, director of the China Organ Transplant Response System Research Center of the Ministry of Health, in an interview featured in the November edition of a World Health Organization journal called the Bulletin (pdf).

[…] Officials in the world’s most populous country have before conceded that China has depended for many years on executed prisoners as its main source of organ supply for ailing citizens. Human-rights groups have criticized the practice, saying that organ harvesting is often forced and influences the speed and number of China’s executions.

[…] The demand for transplants in China is growing, said Mr. Wang in the report. An estimated 1.5 million people in China are in need of organ transplants annually, while only 10,000 receive them, according to government statistics.

In an encouraging sign for the success of the new scheme, a study published in January found that almost three-quarters of Chinese would be willing to donate their own organs after death.

Prisoners aside, China hosts a thriving illegal market. 137 people were arrested in August on suspicion of black market organ trafficking.

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Ministry of Health, organ harvesting, organ trafficking, organ transplants, Red Cross, world health organization
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As early as in the 1980s, China started reforms in court trials and ensuring professionalism in judicature, focusing on enhancing the function of court trials, expanding the openness of trials, improving attorney defense functions, and training professional judges and procurators.

In 2004, China launched large-scale judicial reforms based on overall planning, deployment and implementation. Starting with issues that caused complaints from the public and the key links that hamper judicial justice, according to the demands of promoting judicial impartiality and strict enforcement of the law, and proceeding from the regular pattern and characteristics of judicial practice, China improved the structure of its judicial organs, division of judicial functions and system of judicial management, to establish a judicial system featuring clearly defined power and responsibilities, mutual collaboration and restraint, and highly efficient operation. Thereby, China’s judicial reform entered a phase of overall planning and advancing in an orderly way.

Since 2008, China has initiated a new round of judicial reform, and entered a stage of deepening in key areas and overall advancement. The reform proceeds from the demands of the public for justice, with safeguarding the people’s common interests as its fundamental task, promoting social harmony as the main principle and strengthening supervision and restraint of power as priority. China aims to tackle problems in the key links that hamper judicial justice and restrain judicial capability, remove existing barriers in the institutional setup and operational mechanism as well as provision of legal guarantee, and put forward the specific tasks for judicial reform in four aspects – optimizing the allocation of judicial functions and power, implementing the policy of balancing leniency and severity, building up the ranks of judicial workers, and ensuring judicial funding. Currently, the tasks of this round of judicial reform have been basically completed, as relevant laws have been amended and improved. As China is making continuous progress in economic and social development, its judicial reform is bound to advance further.

State media coverage has praised the paper, which emerged just weeks ahead of a major leadership turnover at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, touting specific accomplishments from lawyers’ rights to the strengthening of grassroots judicial organs and China’s “prudent” application of the death penalty. Some legal experts, however, told the South China Morning Post that the paper doesn’t “serve as convincing proof” that China’s legal system is headed in the right direction:

They said the paper merely made it appear that leaders had done a good job, before some of them stepped down in the leadership reshuffle.

“The paper does not lay out a concrete path directing the future of legal reform of China. It is an attempt to praise the current leaders,” said Professor He Weifang, who teaches law at Peking University.

He added that, as the legal system still operated under the party central committee’s Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, it lacked the apparatus to implement reforms.

Another lawyer, Wang Cailiang of the All China Lawyers Association, told Voice of America that observers must now focus on how new laws are implemented:

“We can’t just look at what they say,” Wang said. “We need to look at what they will do and how they will do it.”

Wang, who specializes in representing villagers whose land is being sized by developers without proper compensation, says that the white paper fails to address the core issue of judiciary independence.

“For the courts and the procurator and the judicial authorities to stand up independently, they need to break away from their relation of dependency with the government,” he said. “Otherwise, any talk of a just and fair judiciary is fruitless.”

Wang says that in his line of work, citizens’ rights and interests are often trampled upon because of the governmental interference with the courts’ work.

For The Diplomat, Carl Minzer writes that the new white paper marks “a substantial departure” from the paper published last year and suspects that “policy shifts are in the cards”:

The big question is: why is this being issued now?

The 2011 white paper was issued mere days after the conclusion of the fall Party plenum last year, presumably reflecting some degree of elite consensus with regard to the direction of internal legal and political reform (at that point, clearly moving in a more hardline direction). In contrast, the 2012 paper has been released in the weeks leading up to one of the most uncertain and unclear leadership transitions that China has faced in decades.

Is this merely a tactical play by an individual leader seeking to put the issue of judicial reform on the table? Or is it a sign that top Party authorities have actually reached broad consensus with regard to relaunching legal reform in the wake of the November leadership transition?

See also previous CDT coverage of legal reform in China.

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Post tags: death penalty, judicial reform, legal reform, State Council, white paper
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A court spokesman, Yang Yuquan, this afternoon said proceedings had been “public” but no independent journalists were permitted into court.

The spokesman made no mention of Bo, who remains in detention under the Communist Party’s internal discipline procedures, although it did praise Wang’s cooperation in investigating the ‘crimes of others’.

…

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Chongqing corruption, corruption, death penalty, defection, Wang Lijun
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The verdict and sentence appear to wrap up one of the more lurid chapters of a sweeping scandal that brought down Ms. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, and challenged the Communist Party during a politically delicate, once-a-decade leadership transition that is set to culminate in the fall.

[…] Shortly after the verdict, Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province, told reporters that the court weighed Ms. Gu’s confession, her testimony that implicated others and the litany of psychological problems she is reported to have suffered. In the end, however, he said Mr. Heywood’s threats in no way justified her crimes.

[…] Legal analysts and political experts said Ms. Gu’s suspended death sentence was most likely calibrated to satisfy the Chinese public and the British government, but also supporters of Mr. Bo, who remains a darling among leftists and certain factions of the leadership enamored of his zealous campaign against organized crime and his efforts to address some of the income disparities that have accompanied three decades of free-market reform.

The British embassy issued a statement welcoming the investigation and trial, at which two of its diplomats were present as observers, and restated its opposition to the execution of Heywood’s killers.

Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog explained the probable reality of Gu’s punishment, which could ultimately be reduced to as little as nine years in prison.

Gu Kailai has been sentenced to death with a two-year suspension. Under Art. 50 of the Criminal Law, if she commits no new intentional crimes while in prison, that sentence will be commuted after two years to life imprisonment. It can even be commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment if she “genuinely demonstrates major merit” (确有重大立功表现). And further reductions are possible after the initial commutation.

Under Art. 78 of the Criminal Law and a 2011 Supreme People’s Court directive, those sentenced to life imprisonment or a term of years (including as a result of a commuted death sentence) may have their sentences reduced for good behavior (that’s my own term; Chinese law speaks of showing repentance or establishing merit) during their imprisonment. And various forms of good behavior are listed, including (in the 2011 SPC directive) paying compensation. Presumably that will not be a problem for Gu.

While state media have presented Gu’s trial as proof that all are equal before the law, the possibility of early parole has cultivated the opposite impression. Josh Chin surveyed some online reactions at The Wall Street Journal:

While censors appeared to be holding back in the first few hours after the verdict was reported, not all comments were allowed to stand. “A suspended death sentence isn’t surprising at all,” one Sina Weibo user wrote in a post that was quickly deleted. “From Jiang Qing to today, what government official’s family member has been given an actual death sentence for committing a serious crime? It’s an unspoken rule!”

And although cynicism dominated the early reactions, a handful of users tried to cast the verdict in a positive light — as a development that might help turn public opinion against capital punishment.

“It is extremely necessary for China to get rid of the death penalty,” argued on Sina Weibo user posting under the name Ke Luomu. “Capital punishment is the only service prepared exclusively for regular people.”

According to WSJ Chinese editor Li Yuan, however, the verdict’s moment in the Weibo spotlight quickly passed:

Weiboers have moved on from GKL verdict. They probably don’t really care. Now the focus is Myanmar ending censorship. When will it be China?

— Li Yuan (@LiYuan6) August 20, 2012

(Myanmar announced the abolition of direct censorship on Monday, though as Reuters’ Aung Hla Tun reports, other restrictions on press freedom will remain.)

A number of legal scholars and other observers have expressed scepticism about the trial based on second-hand accounts of the evidence presented. On Monday, a new inconsistency apparently emerged between the official version of events and the unheard testimony of Gu’s son, as reported by a family friend. From William Wan at The Washington Post:

“In the testimony, Bo Guagua asserted he didn’t meet Heywood and did not engage in anything with Heywood in recent years,” the person said.

[…] The assertions attributed to Gu’s son — who was studying until recently at Harvard University — cast doubts on the official narrative pushed by court officials and state-run media throughout Gu’s trial.

Court officials said Gu killed Heywood because he sent her son an email threatening him over business differences.

Those suspicious that the woman on trial was not Gu Kailai at all received unexpected support on Sunday. According to The Financial Times, “two security experts familiar with facial recognition software said the person shown in state television footage of the courtroom was not Ms Gu.” Meanwhile, still more outlandish rumours surfaced on Boxun—”which often makes claims difficult to prove”, as Want China Times delicately put it—that a former rival of Gu’s had been murdered, plastinated and put on display as part of the famous Body Worlds exhibition. (See a similar rumour debunked by Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth, via Bill Bishop).

With Gu’s case, for now, apparently closed, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page looked ahead to future developments in the Bo Xilai saga:

The next step toward concluding the scandal is widely expected to be the trial of Mr. Wang [Lijun], most likely on treason charges related to what authorities have called his “unauthorized” consulate visit. Mr. Wang, who was detained by Chinese security officers and placed under investigation after leaving the consulate, stepped down in June as a member of the national Parliament—a resignation that stripped him of immunity from prosecution.

Mr. Bo, however, is still a member both of the national Parliament and of the party—official exclusion from which is usually a necessary precursor to criminal charges, according to experts on Chinese politics and law.

[…] If Mr. Bo is dealt with internally by the party, a final decision on his fate could be announced by the autumn, but if he is turned over to the courts, many observers do not expect a trial until next year at the earliest.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, death penalty, death sentence, donald clarke, gu kailai, legal system, murders, Neil Heywood, rule of law, trials, Wang Lijun
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The review of death penalty should include the questioning of the defendant, and listening to the opinions of his or her attorney if the attorney so demands, the action plan said.

Legal supervision by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate over the review of death penalty will be strengthened, the plan said, adding that the Supreme People’s Court will publicize typical cases to clarify the norms of application of death penalty.

The action plan said China will continue to push forward standardized measurement of penalty, and the people’s procuratorates will make suggestions on penalty measurement to the people’s courts when handling criminal cases.

The discretion in penalty measurement will be institutionalized. Guidelines on penalty measurement by the people’s courts will be worked out, so will regulations of the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security on standardizing procedures of penalty measurement to guarantee openness and fairness in penalty measurement, it said.

The director of research for the Supreme People’s Court told The China Daily that tighter court procedures had already helped reduce the percentage of death penalty verdicts overturned, from 10 percent in 2010 to 7 percent last year:

“Courts have mastered uniform policy, including procedural and evidence norms, for cases in which the death penalty could be a possibility,” Hu said.

Consequently, the number of death sentences overturned due, for example, to mistakes in gathering evidence were significantly lower, he said.

Sentences that were overturned were mostly due to procedural flaws, inappropriate sentences or crimes related to finance.

The China Daily piece also included the below diagram outlining the steps in the judicial review process:

See also CDT coverage of Wu Ying, a Zhejiang billionaire entrepreneur whose death sentence for fraudulent fundraising was rejected by the Supreme People’s Court and sent back to Zhejiang’s high court for resentencing.

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Post tags: death penalty, judicial review, legal system, Supreme People's Court, Wu Ying
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Two men accused of fatally shooting a pair of Chinese graduate students at the University of Southern California were charged on Tuesday with capital murder, making them eligible to face the death penalty if convicted, prosecutors said ….

The men arrested in the case, 20-year-old Bryan Barnes and 19-year-old Javier Bolden, have been charged with capital murder during a suspected robbery. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty or life in prison, both options in a capital case, the district attorney’s office said.

The two will face the charges when they appear in a Los Angeles court later on Tuesday afternoon.

The victims’ parents sued USC last week, accusing the university of making misleading claims about students’ safety. From The Los Angeles Times:

Their attorney, Alan Burton Newman, alleges in the lawsuit that USC inaccurately claimed on its website that it “is ranked among the safest of U.S. universities and colleges, with one of the most comprehensive, proactive campus and community safety programs in the nation.” The suit notes that USC says it provides 24-hour security on campus and in surrounding neighborhoods.

The suit says USC “provided no patrolling” in the neighborhood where the shooting occurred. After the killings, USC persisted with a “clearly misleading” portrayal of safety, reiterating in a letter to the campus community that crime “is low compared to other areas of Los Angeles,” according to the lawsuit.

In response, USC attorney Debra Wong Yang said the university is “deeply saddened by this tragic event, which was a random violent act not representative of the safety of USC or the neighborhoods around campus. While we have deep sympathy for the victims’ families, this lawsuit is baseless and we will move to have it dismissed.”

Stan Abrams, commenting on the case at China Hearsay, agreed, concluding that whatever precautions are taken, “these things just happen.”

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Post tags: death penalty, Los Angeles, murders, USC
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After a serial of trials which first began in April 2009, Wu Ying was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to the Zhejiang Higher People’s Court website.

Legal experts immediately interpreted the sentence as life imprisonment under China’s legal environment.

Wu’s former lawyer Zhang Yanfeng said to media, “She’s been sentenced to life imprisonment, barring any wrongdoing in the next two years.” Zhang said the verdict was expected as provincial high courts are subordinate to the Supreme People’s Court.

New York University law professor Jerome Cohen told The New York Times last month that the SPC’s decision “seems a typical Chinese judicial compromise between what those who call for the death penalty wanted and what Wu’s many supporters, both popular and professional, have called for”. The new suspended death sentence may be an attempt to maintain a similar balance, compared with the lighter sentences Cohen held out as another possible outcome. But human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig described it as “a gutless decision, one that ignores core problems with the case“. Although some supporters expressed satisfaction at Wu’s likely escape from execution, questions about uneven punishment and institutional problems remain. From Chuin-Wei Yap at China Real Time Report:

The case attracted widespread media attention for the severity of the sentence and the long-running campaign in China’s blogosphere to save her.

Many of her supporters wondered aloud why she was facing death when corrupt officials found guilty of similar crimes were often granted lighter sentences ….

For the public that’s kept the issue alive for more than three years, it’s a gratifying conclusion. “It’s not just Wu Ying,” Wang Shuo, a prominent magazine editor, wrote on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo. “If it’s non-violent financial crime, no one should die.”

“Wu Ying was unlucky to run into hole in the legal system,” added another Sina Weibo user writing under the handle Chaoxin Xinzhixing. “When will China’s legal system be more robust, so the public can be convinced?”

Tea Leaf Nation’s survey of Sina Weibo reactions reveals similarly mixed views, and notes that over 3.5 million posts on the subject were culled from search results overnight [Update: TLN reports that many of the culled comments later re-appeared].

Many netizens hailed the result. @杭州恰恰 wrote, “This is…a victory for public opinion! [Responsiveness to] public opinion is progressing!” @洪陈纷纭 wrote: “The power of democracy; the power of Weibo.”

Unfortunately, many netizens felt their victory, if it was theirs at all, was a Pyrrhic one. @Q版温故‘s comment aptly captured netizen sentiment: “No matter what, the result is progress. But this time, the progress is mostly because of the contributions of public opinion, and not law itself.” Instead of law, many commenters perceived realpolitik, hard at work. @闫英士 opined, “The real meaning is this: The death sentence is to save face, the commutation is to quiet citizen rage. But it all has nothing to do with Wu Ying herself, and certainly doesn’t prove the independence of the so-called judiciary.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Jerome cohen, Supreme People's Court, Wang Shuo, Wu Ying, Zhejiang
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The SPC held that the facts of the case were clear, the evidence was sufficient, and the nature of the crime Wu committed had been determined accurately in the verdicts which were made by lower courts.

“Wu obtained an extremely large sum of money through fraudulent fundraising, causing severe losses to the victims, undermining the national financial order and creating extremely harmful effects, and thus entails a penalty in line with the law,” the SPC ruled ….

After fully considering all the factors, the SPC ruled that immediate execution may be inappropriate in the Wu case, overriding the death sentence.

While the ruling against “immediate” execution may sound ominous, a prominent expert told The New York Times that a lighter punishment now seems likely:

Jerome A. Cohen, a scholar of Chinese law at New York University, said in an e-mail interview that the supreme court could have resentenced Ms. Wu itself and imposed a new penalty, including death with a two-year suspension. That usually means that the convicted person will never be executed; after two years of good behavior, he or she might get a life sentence.

“But, by sending the case back for resentencing, it leaves open the possibility that Wu may immediately get an even lighter sentence than a two-year suspended death penalty, such as 15 years,” Professor Cohen said. “This seems a typical Chinese judicial compromise between what those who call for the death penalty wanted and what Wu’s many supporters, both popular and professional, have called for.”

China Real Time’s Josh Chin collected some comments on the role of public opinion from Sina Weibo:

“Weibo has saved Wu Ying” -– Xu Xiaoping, investor

“Is the Zhejiang High People’s Court not up to snuff, or did public opinion just trump the prosecutors?” –- Zhang Xiangtao, police officer

“The Supreme People’s Court refuses to approve the death penalty for Wuying – this is a victory for Chinese online public opinion. The power of public opinion definitely doesn’t manifest in correct ways all the time, but China needs a tutorial in how to respect it more. Like I’ve said before: Non-fatal crimes, no death penalty. This applies to everyone.” –-Hu Xijin, editor of the nationalist tabloid Global Times

The breadth of public support for the billionaire may, as The Economist noted in January, appear at odds with widespread resentment of China’s growing income inequality. But much of it was fuelled by Wu’s position on the wrong side of another chasm in Chinese society: between those with rank, connections and power, and those without. An in-depth account of Wu’s case at China Entrepreneur (via Sinocism) suggested that this was what left her vulnerable:

Wu Ying’s father Wu Yongzheng, her husband Zhou Hongbo and many creditors share one belief about this case: Wu Ying is in trouble because she has picked the wrong place at the wrong time. They say her fall is not caused by private lending, but by her shaky foundation of powerful connections in Dongyang ….

“Dongyang has made a lot of efforts to attract investors, but few chose to stay, because the business environment is no good here,” Wu Ying’s husband Zhou Hongbo said during a phone interview. He said that he was strongly against Wu Ying’s idea of trying to grow her businesses in Dongyang, because he believed that she was too weak to compete against the local powers.

Wu Yongzheng says that his daughter told him that she was threatened for refusing to pay bribes to the Lou family, which he calls the local power that has dominated Dongyang for years. He remembers the threat as if it were a line from a gangster film: Somebody said, “who cares Wu Ying is making so much noise now? Sooner or later I’d have her kneeling down before me.”

See also ‘Shadow Banks on Trial With China’s “Rich Sister”‘, on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: capital punishment, death penalty, public opinion, sina weibo, Supreme People's Court, underground bank, Wu Ying, Zhejiang
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The case of 31-year-old Wu Ying, who was convicted of “illegal fund-raising”, has also stirred debate about the fairness of the economic system. State-owned enterprises can borrow money from (state-owned) banks, whereas private businesses are often left to fend for themselves in an informal market of moneylending, such as the one in which Ms Wu thrived.

Ms Wu’s youth and humble origins, as well as an absence of real evidence that her activities caused harm to anyone, except possibly some rich investors, have also helped endear her to a general public informed by internet chatter. She began her career working in her aunt’s beauty salon in coastal Zhejiang province, and went on to run other beauty parlours before building up a conglomerate, the Bense Group, with a wide range of interests from property to lending. Amazingly, in 2006, aged just 25, she was named China’s sixth-richest woman by Hurun Report, a wealth researcher.

Ms Wu’s extraordinary rise is hard to imagine without her doing some dodgy deals. Possibly the wrong ones, for her fall was even more rapid than her rise. She was arrested, sentenced to death in 2009 for illegally raising $120m in funds from illicit sources (ie, not official banks). Chinese press reports said Ms Wu gave information that led to the arrests of officials and bankers. Some wonder whether the death sentence was aimed at stopping her from revealing more.

Since 2007, China’s Supreme People’s Court has been required to review all death penalty cases, and Wu’s is currently under evaluation. It isn’t only the supreme court who has an interest in this case, but also the many Chinese entrepreneurs whose business activity has embodied practices similar to those carried out by Wu, and a public who feels she has been unfairly sentenced. A detailed article from Bloomberg describes the practice of “shadow banking,” and how some see it as an institution essential to China’s economic development:

Her crime involved a common, illegal practice in China: raising money from the public with promises to pay back high interest rates. Known as shadow banking, these underground lending and investing networks are estimated to total $1.3 trillion, according to Ren Xianfang, an economist with IHS Global Insight Ltd. (IHS) in Beijing. That’s the size of the 2011 U.S. government deficit.

Operating outside the banking system or government regulation, the informal networks provide an important source of economic growth, capital for private companies and return for investors seeking to beat inflation. Premier Wen Jiabao, in an unusual move, weighed in on the Wu case at a March 14 news conference. His comments highlighted a public debate over the importance of shadow banking to the Chinese economy, government efforts to bring it under control — and whether capital punishment is an effective means to do so.

[...]“Entrepreneurs are paying attention to it because today’s Wu Ying could be any of them tomorrow,” the lawyer, Yang Zhaodong, said in an interview in Beijing last month. “There are so many of them doing the same thing Wu Ying did. This case not only relates to Wu’s life, but to whether China’s legal and judicial system is fair.”

Shadow banking has been fueled by a two-year credit squeeze in China and by large, state-owned banks’ preference for lending to government-run companies rather than small businesses. Private entrepreneurs account for 60 percent of China’s total economic activity and provide jobs for 80 percent of its urban population, according to China’s National Development and Reform Commission.

Wu’s case is at the center of two reform debates in China: one concerning capital punishment, the other focusing on economic policy, and both connected to systemic corruption. Tania Brannigan at The Guardian has more on the unfolding controversies:

Her case has become emblematic of the difficulties of being an entrepreneur under China’s system of state capitalism, and of the murky world in which much private enterprise is conducted, with businesses forced to take risks to get ahead.

[...]“Wu’s death penalty is a setback for the cause of reform in China,” the influential economist Zhang Weiying said. “Judging from this case, how far are we from the market economy? At least 300 years.”

[...]Supporters claim Wu was singled out because “she annoyed someone” and lacked connections. Some think she upset influential creditors or rivals; some that she refused to pay bribes. Her case is not about enforcing the law, they argue, but about the law being enforced selectively – and excessively – when the interests of money and power coincide.

Many see such links between wealth and power, on a grander scale, as the biggest obstacle to reforms. Others think the risks of instability posed by restructuring finance, state enterprise and the labour market are simply too threatening for leaders.

As is common with controversial subjects in China, Wu Ying’s name showed up in orders from the “Ministry of Truth” during the Two Sessions earlier this year. For more coverage of shadow banking (aka shadow lending), see Swimming Naked in China, via CDT.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: capital punishment, death penalty, shadow banking, shadow lending, Wu Ying
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