Research On Death Penalty With A Two-year Reprieve

The System of Death penalty with a two-year reprieve (also Sihuan in Chinese) is characteristic of Chinese system of death penalty execution, which was rooted in Chinese rich native law culture, fully embodying the Chinese criminal policy"to kill less and cautiously". It is a creative result on the base of combination of the Marxism and Mao Zedong thoughts with reality of China, and it is the contemporary socialist distinctive feature of the criminal law. At present, our country being at the stage of primary of socialism, the economic needs to be developed necessarily,meanwhile, development of productivity is in the state of unbalance. The conflicts between productivity and relations of production exist widely. Social public security order has been still serious, some criminal means tending to be extremely bad which has a very extremely bad influence on our living. In addition, the traditional idea or conception of retribution for sin has been rooted in the mind of people for so long time, which is hard to be got rid of in a short time, so we have no possibility to fully abolish the death penalty immediately so far. The objective state makes our China have to keep the death penalty, but what we can do is to limit the application of death penalty as much as we can. The Standing Committee of NPC has voted the Criminal law amendment (8), February 25, 2011. Thirteen kinds of offences of death penalty are abolished, and the old criminal man over 75 should be exempted of death penalty. The provisions indicate the great judicial reform of"limitation to application of death penalty"running on the main streams of thoughts of world punishment culture that goes to the trend of light mitigation. It is a great step forward to our social judicial civilization. This essay just focuses on thought of the light mitigation, aimed at the defects of the present system of Sihuan, in order to improve, make full and further use of the deserved function and value of it. The thesis consists of three parts except the preface and concluding summery.Chapter one, the general introduction of Sihuan, which includes the following three fragments: First, a brief summery of the concept and features of the death penalty with a two-year reprieve system. Its four main characters summarized are adhesive, original, executive quality and undefined results of serving sentence. Adhesive means that the Sihuan cannot exist without death penalty; original means the Sihuan came into being in China but any other country; executive quality refers to it is a system of death execution but not a kind of criminal punishment; undefined results refers to that general criminal sentenced to Sihaun in or after two years of parole period may have three different results: death execution (life to be deprived), imprisonment for life, fixed-term imprisonment of 25 years. Second, the history sources of Sihuan have been summarized, introducing the rich history culture of criminal law as well as the present states of it, coming to a conclusion that the Sihuan is an original creation of China. Thirdly, the value of the Sihuan is discussed, that is, it embodies the rich native splendid cultural thoughts, conforms to the trend developing to the light punishment and embodies the humanity.Chapter two, application and execution of death reprieve, concerning to three problems. Firstly, the prerequisite conditions of the application and execution of Sihuan are presented, that is,the basis on which it stays must be on that of death penalty. In other words, if there exists no death penalty, the Sihuan cannot exist any longer. Secondly, the exceptional states as well as conditions where the Sihuan is applied, which concludes three aspects: man when committing offense is not up to 18 years old cannot be sentenced to death penalty, 75-year-old man when at trial cannot be sentenced to death penalty and pregnant women when at trial cannot be sentenced to death penalty. Finally, the execution of the Sihuan is discussed.Chapter three, the legislation demerits and the improvement of Sihuan, on the base of which assumptive ideas of legislation are presented. In this part, the following problems are solved: first, the controversy topic between immediate execution of death penalty and unnecessary immediate execution of death penalty. Second, dealing with the intended crime differently according to the different circumstances, and to lengthen the probation period accordingly; Third, the Sihuan may be established in the criminal law as a kind of criminal punishment, that is public surveillance, criminal detention, fixed term imprisonment, imprisonment for life, Sihaun and death penalty, thus embodying the importance of death reprieve; Four, the scientific name of the death reprieve is cleared up, the so-called"Sihuan"is replaced with the name"death penalty with reprieve". Five, the Sihuan should be set up as a necessary-procedure to the immediate execution of death penalty, and accordingly, it should be dealt as a smooth transition to the final aim of abolishing the death penalty. It means that Sihuan only applies to extremely serious criminal, accordingly, death penalty only applies to the criminal who has also intended to committed offense during the probation period and the new crime should be sentenced to no less than five years punishment. Therefore, it not only embodies the value but also its function, making the punishment system perfect and fully exploiting the value of criminal law.