CHINA SEES 30% DROP IN DEATH PENALTY

Chinese courts handed down about 30 percent fewer death penalties last year compared with 2006, sources from a forum revealed.
On January 1, 2007 China's Supreme People's Court took back the power of death penalty review. The effect is a stricter and more appropriate application of capital punishment, said Li Wuqing, a judge with the No. 1 criminal court of the Supreme Court.
Wu Sheng, a judge from a court in Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, said at the forum that the number of approved death penalties decreased by up to 40 percent last year in that city. Legal experts, researchers and judges from China and Britain participated in the forum held in the port city of Liaoning Province, northeast China, with a focus on restriction and abolition of the death penalty.