Reuters North American News Service, January 3rd, 2008
BEIJING, Jan 3 (Reuters) - China will expand the use of
lethal injections to replace execution by gunshot, state media
said on Thursday of a country which kills more convicts than
anywhere else.
China executes about 10,000 people a year, according to the
New York-based group Human Rights Watch. Other estimates of
China's annual executions range between 5,000 and 12,000.
Lethal injections were considered "more humane and will
eventually be used in all intermediate people's courts", the
China Daily quoted Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the
Supreme People's Court, as saying.
China has been slowly reforming the death penalty system
after several high-profile wrongful convictions raised public
anger.
The Supreme People's Court last year took back its power of
final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial
high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s.
But the China Daily did not suggest any quick end to
China's use of the death penalty.
"We cannot talk about abolishing or controlling the use of
death sentences in the abstract without considering ground
realities and social security conditions," it quoted Chief
Justice Xiao Yang as saying, adding that there was a strong
belief in the concept of "an eye for an eye and a life for a
life".
The death penalty is imposed for dozens of crimes,
including non-violent offences such as corruption and tax
fraud.
Among those executed last year was Zheng Xiaoyu, former
head of the food and drug safety watchdog, who was put to death
for taking bribes to renew drugs licences.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; editing by Nick Macfie)
