"Prudent" Chinese courts cut back on executions

BEIJING, June 8 (Reuters) China has executed fewer people since the country's highest court was given authority to review death sentences at the start of this year, state media reported today.

China executes an estimated 5,000 to 12,000 people a year, more than the rest of the world combined.

On Jan. 1, the country's Supreme People's Court reclaimed its right of final review, ending the practice of allowing lower courts to order executions, following media reports exposing a string of wrongful convictions concealed by investigators.

The number of death sentences in first trials imposed in Beijing courts dropped 10 percent, and a similar trend was evident across the country, Ni Shouming, the court's spokesman, told the China Daily.

''The lower courts have to be more prudent now. If a case is sent back for a retrial by the highest court, it not only means the first judgment is wrong, but also a matter of shame for the lower court,'' Ni said.

Chen Weidong, a criminal law expert at the People's University in Beijing, forecast executions would drop 20 percent in 2007, the paper said.

''Leniency and more judicious use of capital punishment is the trend of the time,'' Chen said.

Chinese legal officials in March said executions would gradually slow and China's chief justice in November called for ''extreme caution'' in handing out death penalties.

Yesterday, a San Francisco-based rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, said the number of executions in China had dropped 40 per cent to about 7,500 a year since Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics six years ago.

China defends the death sentence as necessary to protect the state and the people, and says conditions are not yet ripe for its abolishment.

REUTERS JK PM0721