China's high courts yesterday began reopening hearings for death penalty cases in a long-awaited move aimed at raising the quality of justice in capital punishment cases.
"With the ultimate power to assess cases involving capital punishment now given to the high courts, our nation's judicial system is faced with new and higher requirements in its deliberation work," China's top judge Xiao Yang (
The new procedures were a result of the "nature of domestic and foreign politics," Xiao said, acknowledging international concern over the number of people executed in China.
China executes more people a year than the rest of the world combined, according to rights group Amnesty International.
Although the exact number is a state secret, Chinese academics have publicly estimated that the state puts up to 10,000 people to death every year.
The move is also designed to reduce the use of torture to extract confessions. China's Supreme People's Court acknowledged last week that forced confessions had led to miscarriages of justice and misuse of the death penalty.
"In a summary by the Supreme Court of unjust and problematic cases involving mistaken executions ... it was discovered that most cases had problems relating to using torture to extract confessions," vice Supreme Court justice Zhang Jun (
Provincial high courts must now open hearings for defendants who face the death sentence and allow defense attorneys to present testimony and review evidence, Xiao said.
Previously, these courts had only approved death sentences from case documents and did not hear defense arguments or testimony from defendants.
The new hearings must also be videotaped. Xiao said the new procedures would improve judicial decisions,prosecution, defense and investigation.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered