On Sentencing Procedures Of Death Penalty

The death penalty is one kind of the oldest penalty means, in China, even in the world, also one of the most severe kind of legal sanction. With the continuous progress of modern civilization, based on respect for the right to life and humanitarian reasons, to abolish the death penalty system has become an irreversible trend of the international community penalty reform. But, due to specific national conditions, cultural traditions, and other factors abolished the death penalty completely in recent times is not possible. However, to improve the death penalty substantive and procedural system, limit the application of the death penalty is imperative. Under this environment, Chinese criminal proceedings are still taking the conviction and sentencing of the mixed-mode in death penalty cases. It’s not meeting the development trend, and brought a lot of difficulties. Such as the judges has too much discretion, the defense sentencing defense difficult. To solve these problems, we can learn from the death penalty sentencing procedures in the United States and Japan. Improving the independence of the death penalty sentencing procedures, increasing the constraints on the discretion of the judge, improving the defense counsel the right to defense, protecting the victim’s sentencing claim these aspects to improve our existing death penalty sentencing procedures, limit the application of the death penalty in the judicial practice in China.