On The Abolition Of Suspended Death Sentence System

The suspended death sentence system, namely the death penalty with two years of reprieve and probation, applicable to certain convicts who should be sentenced to death but without the necessity of an immediate execution, is a penal system by which the court simultaneously declares a two years of reprieve with the death sentence. This system is developed from the postponed death sentence policy in the early 1950s. It is a unique penalty system and exclusively used by the People's Republic of China.The suspended death sentence system, at the beginning of being created, has played a certain role of sentencing or executing death penalty less and carefully under the particular historical condition of the suppressing counter-revolutionary campaign. However, with the ending of suppressing counter-revolutionary campaign and the completion of socialist transformation, especially after our focusing on economic development instead of class struggle, the system had already lost its survival soil. Although the suspended death sentence system was officially written into China's Criminal Law 1979 and was retained in the revised edition 1997, with its born and irreparable defects in theory, nowadays not only has it been unable to achieve its original intention, but also has created many malpractices in the judicial practice.This paper, from the point of jurisprudence, the function of the penalty system, the effect of judicial practice as well as the trend of international criminal judicial development, conducts a comprehensive inspection to the suspended death sentence system to reflect the system comprehensively and proposes the abolition of the system. And in light of China's current policy of sentencing or executing death penalty less and carefully and the taking- back of the death penalty review power , the author raises some relevant reform measures on condition that the system is abolished. Under the polarization criminal policy background, first of all, the conditions for the application of the death penalty should be strictly limited. Secondly, for the recidivist and serious crimes such as more than 10 years of imprisonment, life imprisonment as well as the suspended death sentence, the penalty of deterrence is reflected by increasing the intensity of the actual punishment, that is, the raising of the upper limit of imprisonment and the strict conditions of parole and reducing penalty for life imprisonment. Thirdly, the minor criminal offender, can be made to returned to the society as truly and soon as possible after penalty through the emphasizing on education and transformation, reducing the intensity of punishment and particularly the vigorous promotion of non-custodial sentences. It is through such reform measures that the road to restrict and even abolish the death penalty begins.