Xinhua says China’s supreme court approved the death sentence of Liu and 11 others Thursday. All death sentences are sent to the supreme court for review and are usually carried out immediately if approved.

The other 11 people were convicted of crimes including murder and robbery.

China executes more people than any other country — around 4,000 people a year.

The China Daily reported that 15 people in total were executed and that two other men convicted of assisting Liu with the crime each received seven years in jail. See also additional CDT coverage of the death penalty in China, including a recent photoseries which depicts the last 12 hours in the lives of four condemned female drug dealers before their 2003 execution in Wuhan.

[Update: This post was edited to reflect the China Daily report that a total of 15 people executed, rather than the 12 reported by the Washington Post.]

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Post tags: capital punishment, Changsha, death penalty, Supreme Court, wuhan
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Huang Songyou, the court’s former vice-president, is the first judicial official of his stature to be tried and convicted on such charges, part of a continuing Communist party campaign against deep-seated and high-level corruption.

Formally known as the supreme people’s court, the body is the highest judicial panel in China with wide-ranging powers including overseeing lower courts and reviewing death sentences. The court has 13 members, with its grand justice also sitting on the party’s decision-making central committee.

Huang’s entire property also was confiscated under the ruling, according to the official China News Service.

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The Song of the People’s Judges　(人民法官之歌):

See Chinese lyrics and music at chinacourt.org, a site sponsored by the Supreme People’s Court of the PRC.

Translated lyrics via Donald Clarke of China Law Prof Blog:

Let loyalty be cast in the magnificent state seal
And support the golden balance-scales with impartiality
Open up and advance along the road to construction of the legal system
The spring wind of law blows across the cities and the villages.

To investigate the smallest detail, to eliminate the false and keep the true is our duty
To punish evil and promote good, and to support justice is our mission
O, be proud, people’s judges of the Republic!
O, be proud, people’s judges of the Republic!
Glory belongs to us
Glory belongs to the motherland
Glory belongs to the people!

Let loyalty be cast in the magnificent state seal
And support the golden balance-scales with impartiality
Open up and advance along the road to construction of the legal system
The spring wind of law blows across the cities and the villages.

To be loyal to the law and to strictly carry out the law is our bounden duty
To serve the people and to contribute selflessly is our sincere wish
O, be proud, people’s judges of the Republic!
O, be proud, people’s judges of the Republic!
Glory belongs to us
Glory belongs to the motherland
Glory belongs to the people!
Glory belongs to the people! [Above, a chorus in Zhejiang, via qtfy.gov.cn.]

Information about the song and its writer can be found at chinamil.com.cn. A translated summary by CDT:
(...)
Read the rest of Music: The Songs of the People’s Judges, Procurators, and Police (541 words)

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China keeps secret the number of prisoners it executes, but international human rights observers have no doubt it judicially kills more than any other country — with estimates of executions somewhere between 1,000 and 12,000 a year in recent times.

But from the start of 2007, China’s Supreme People’s Court took back power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and promised to apply the ultimate punishment more carefully.

In a rare glimpse into how the new rule is working, the president of the top court’s criminal law chamber, Huang Ermei, said that in 2007 it rejected 15 percent of death sentences passed by lower courts, according to the China News Service on Saturday. She gave no hint of the overall number of executions.

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Post tags: death penalty, legal reform, Supreme Court
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The following opinion piece, which appeared on November 21, 2007 in The Beijing News (Êñ∞‰∫¨Êä•, Chinese original in PDF) and was then translated by Dui Hua, raises concerns about the future of China’s Supreme People’s Court. Faced with an “extremely large number” of death sentences to review, the SPC has been forced to take on hundreds of new criminal court judges, many of whom have lower qualifications than judges in the past. The author suggests this influx of less-qualified judges who focus on reviewing individual capital cases presents an obstacle to the SPC’s progress toward a more ideal goal, one in which high-court decisions contribute to the nation’s social and economic development. At stake, he warns, is the court’s ultimate ability to ensure judicial authority. [Full text]

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The Supreme People’s Court of China issued a wide-ranging circular stressing the need to protect the rights of individuals including peasants, laborers, employees and creditors in order to build a more harmonious society.

All courts in the country need to actively work toward a harmonious society by protecting people’s interests and reducing instability in society, the circular said.

It outlined five areas were the country’s courts have to solve social issues in order to achieve a harmonious society.[Full Text]

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Post tags: harmonious society, Supreme Court
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