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China?s highest court issues new guidelines for administering capital punishment

By Douglas A. Berman

Students of the modern American death penalty know that the U.S. Supreme Court has spent a good part of the last four decades trying to develop standards for how states must balance equal and individual justice in the administration of capital punishment.  Now, as detailed in this new piece from The Times Online, China's Supreme Court has issued some new guidelines as it struggles with similar concerns. Here are the basics: China?s Supreme Court has urged judges to restrict the use of the death penalty to only the gravest crimes and show ?justice tempered with mercy?.  However, the top court in the country that executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined stressed the need for capital punishment and warned against showing mercy to influential officials...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 10, 2010 (boomark / email).