CHINA. STATE EXECUTES WITH ‘DEATH VANS’

the death van is an inconspicuous blue-and-white police vehicle that parks near the courtroom when its services are required by the Chinese judicial system. Inside it is fitted with a couch that can be raised or lowered like an operating table, set in the middle of the floor.
There is space on either side for the bailiff, the court medical expert and one or two policemen to hold down the condemned man. A lethal injection is then administered in a two-stage process by the medical expert, who in some cases may be a qualified doctor, and the bailiff. The process is swift and efficient, according to a policeman who has witnessed the vans in use in Liaoning province, northeast China. "After judgment is pronounced the criminal will be taken somewhere near the court, normally within 10 minutes' drive," said the policeman. "He will then be transferred to the lethal injection van. It's all over very quickly."
A rare newspaper account of an execution on January 19 in Liaoyang, the provincial capital, said the convicted man, Li Jiao, was dead within 14 minutes of the sentence being pronounced.
The vans, which cost 48,000 EU each, are fitted with closed circuit television, which permitted Li's death to be watched by local members of the National People's Congress gathered at the city's funeral parlour. In the past, capital punishment was carried out by a single shot to the back of the head at execution fields outside Chinese cities and families of the dead were sent a bill for the bullet. Now the vans are circulating in several provinces, their clean and discreet method of killing hailed by officials as progress. Death by injection costs the state about 92 EU but is free to the victim's relatives.