China´s highest court to order provinces to retry death sentences

Source: Xinhuanet | 02-28-2007 08:43

BEIJING, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) will send back cases involving death sentence to provincial courts for retrial if it finds errors in judgement, instead of directly changing the sentence, according to a regulation released by the SPC Tuesday.

"The new regulation will guarantee that death sentences are handed out with caution by ordering retrials, which will also improve the efficiency of SPC death penalty reviews," a SPC spokesman told Xinhua Tuesday.

Under the new regulation, the SPC will only the change original death penalty sentences in cases involving individual criminals facing multiple death sentences, or multiple criminals facing death penalties.

The regulation will take effect on Feb. 28.

From Jan. 1 the SPC was empowered to ratify death sentences, rescind or change them or order a retrial.

Editor:Du Xiaodan