CHINA. REFORMS FOR DEATH PENALTY TRIALS IN 2006

in order to improve the handing down of death sentences, top judge Xiao Yang said that Chinese courts would start to hold open court sessions when hearing death penalty trials in the second instance.
"As of July 1, 2006, all the second-instance trials of death sentence cases shall be heard in open court,"" Xiao, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said in his report on the work of the Supreme People's Court.
The move represented another step taken by the SPC to reform the court system concerning capital punishment, following the announcement to retrieve the power of death penalty approval from provincial higher people's courts in October 2005.
"To try second-instance death penalty cases in the open court session is conducive to improving protection of human rights. It serves as a procedural guarantee for preventing misjudge in death sentence cases," said a Supreme People's Court official in an interview with Xinhua. He disclosed that in the past, many courts had failed to hear death penalty cases in second instance in public as provided for by the law.