On April 27, Nguyen Dinh Quyen, Deputy Director of...

On April 27, Nguyen Dinh Quyen, Deputy Director of the National Assembly's law department said the revisions to the Penal Code would also attempt narrower definitions of crimes and the substitution of certain prison terms with financial penalties. He said people convicted of economic crimes, including fraud and smuggling, would no longer risk facing a firing squad, if the legislature approved revisions to the Penal Code, during its month-long sitting. "The death penalty remains for one form of economic crime which is the production and trading in dangerous foods, veterinary medicines and other medicines," Quyen said. But there was no reprieve planned for convicts languishing on death row for crimes likely to be removed from the capital punishment category, he added. Vu Mao, head of the National Assembly office, said the threat of capital punishment in Vietnam had failed to stem rising crime rates. "Over the past 14 years our experience has been that even if we increase the number of crimes with the death penalty we cannot necessarily reduce crime," Mao said. He added that Vietnam had also to consider a more humane method of execution to replace the firing squad. "We have to consider this in relation to the development of science and technology and study the experiences of death penalties in other countries," he explained.