On Judicial Restrictions Of Capital Punishment In China

In the world nowadays, to limit or abolish the capital punishment has becomean unstoppable international trend. As China’s special conditions, the existence ofcapital punishment is still reasonable. It cannot be abolished in a short time, but theirapplication has to be strictly limited. After twenty years of the decentralization ofauthorizing, serious problems occur to the practice of capital punishment in China.The approval process was simplified, and some courts sentence the capitalpunishment without serious consideration, in a speedy way, resulting in theexpansion of the scope of application of the capital punishment. It led to incorrectcases, in which the defendant was not supposed to be sentenced to death, resulting ina very bad social influence. Since2007the Supreme People’s Court regained theright to approve the capital punishment, both the number of death sentences and theactual number of people executed was far lower than before. China’s capitalpunishment restrictions have preliminary results, made a very good legal and socialeffect.“Criminal Law Amendment (VIII)" is a milestone significance of nature,which abolished the capital punishment for13non-violent crimes. China is headingtoward the goal of totally abolishment of the capital punishment. Althoughlegislation to restrict the capital punishment is the most fundamental way, but afterall, the law needs to maintain relative stability, and to cancel the death sentence inmost crimes is not realistic. The judicial way can utilize and interpret legislation, andthe application of the capital punishment through strict regulation and litigationprocedures is much more effective. Therefore, the study of the judicial restrictionshas important practical significance.This paper combines theory and practice, to analyze and research the currentjudicial restrictions of capital punishment in China. The text is divided into threeparts: the first part discusses the reasons of judicial limitations of the capitalpunishment, as well as relevant theoretical, legal and policy basis to reveal thenecessity of judicial restraint and the feasibility of the capital punishment; thesecond part investigate the current sentencing standard by some relevant cases, to summarize the standard of judicial restriction of the capital punishment and toexplore specific barriers that currently exist; the third part describes the principle ofjudicial restrictions of the capital punishment and the specific improvement methodsto solve the current judicial obstacles, and to explore the practical strategy to limitthe capital punishment in China.