Discussion On The Development Trend Of The Death Penalty System In China

Death penalty, as one of the most severe punishment, has been existing forthousands of years. Whether to abolish the death penalty has been discussed forhundreds of years since Beccaria came up with the opinion to abolish death penalty inOn crime and punishment. By discussing the amendment to the death penalty in Theamendments to the criminal law (eight), the paper is going to analyze death penaltyand reach a conclusion that the use of death penalty is restrained and is going to beabolished in China at the end.Nowadays, countries have their own system of applying death penalty pursuant toeach country’s situation. All European countries have abolished the death penalty.Among all the other influential countries in the world, apart from China, only the US,Japan and India are still using the death penalty. Within the US, there are12stateshave abolished the death penalty while there are38states keeping it. China has beenexploring ways of reforming the death penalty since the country was founded. China’sdeath penalty is more reasonable after changing from the Criminal Law79to theCriminal Law97. Less and less crimes can lead to a death sentence. Moreover, the right to confirm a death penalty has been only given to the Supreme Court since Jan1,2007. China is taking a more prudent view towards applying the death penalty.Given to the change of the society, law has to be updated accordingly. Theamendments to the criminal law (eight) is promulgated base on a deep analysis of thecurrent situation. It modifies the Criminal Law and the death penalty system to themost extent among all Amendments. It abolishes the use of death penalty on13non-violent crimes and the use of death penalty on criminals over75. By combiningthe experience and theories abroad and China’s history and current situation, the paperwill analyze the reason of such amendments and give reasonable argumentation andexplanation to the amendments.The paper focuses on the pros and cons of the abolishment of the death penalty.The reason to adopt a system is about whether the system is good for the society as awhole. The difficulty of the paper is lying here. Death penalty exists in a changingsociety, thus the pros and cons change accordingly. Presume that the society is steadymoving forward and there is no war, life will be more respected, human rights will bemore protected and the society is more forgiving. Furthermore, the deterrence of thedeath penalty is another difficulty in the argumentation. There is no doubt that thedeath penalty has profound deterrent force which turns many criminals away. However,the deterrence of the death penalty is not sufficient to support its existence. On onehand, there is no specific answer on the comparison of the deterrence of death penaltyand other penalties such as life sentence. On the other hand, there are many reasonsthat a criminal convicts the crime and the death penalty cannot deter all criminals fromconvicting crimes. The paper will give more explanation on this.The paper is analyzing the reasons of amendments to the death penalty in Theamendments to the criminal law (eight), combining China’s current situation andtheories overseas, and then reaching the conclusion that China’s dealth penalty isrestrained and will be abolished at the end.