China Ends Death Penalty for 13 Crimes

Chelsea E. Shambley
Blog #7
3 March 2011
12:35 am

China is thought to execute more people than the rest of the world put together. In response to this, a law change was proposed just last year. Since then China has removed thirteen offenses from the original list of sixty-eight crimes that are punishable by death. Some of these offenses include tax fraud, the smuggling of cultural relics or precious metals, tomb robbing, and stealing fossils. In response to the law change, Amnesty International reported that it looked like “legal housekeeping,” as all of the crimes removed from the list were seldom, if ever, punished by execution. Because these offenses did not typically result in criminal execution, its hard to say what kind of impact the law change will have on the number of people that receive the death penalty in China each year. The country’s new legal revisions also ban the use of capital punishment for offenders over seventy-five years old.

Why seventy-five? An eighty-year-old could commit an unthinkable crime and an adult in his mid-twenties could commit a crime minuscule in comparison, but the young adult would be the only one subject to execution? Not sure what the thought process was behind that law revision. As for the thirteen offenses removed from the list of crimes punishable by death, I gladly support the change and think it was much needed. To be put to death for stealing fossils? Let’s not get carried away, China.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12580504