when Liu Zhixiang was given a suspended death sentence in April 2006...
when Liu Zhixiang was given a suspended death sentence in April 2006...
when Liu Zhixiang was given a suspended death sentence in April 2006 for a long list of crimes that included hiring an assassin, bribery and embezzling some 40 million yuan (5 million U.S. dollar), it sparked indignant letters of protest from ordinary people and legal scholars alike.
Not because the sentence against Liu, a high-ranking railway official from Wuhan city, was too strong but too lenient. The readers, it seems, wanted Liu's head.
"We shouldn't let off some corrupt officials and punish others," argued legal scholar Yan Lieshan in the China Economic Times. "Corrupt officials' lives should be spared only if the capital punishment is negated for all economic crimes. The current practice of punishing some with death while sparing others harms the public's trust in justice."
In China, theft or embezzlement of 500,000 yuan (62,500 US dollars) officially is the threshold for a death sentence. Lawyers say the sentence these days is rarely applied to cases that involve less than three or four million yuan.
With 40 million yuan of embezzled funds, Liu, the railway employee, should have received a mandatory death sentence. Instead, he was given a suspended death sentence in a trial seen by some as casting a shadow over judicial fairness. Liu's punishment was viewed too soft because the government routinely commutes suspended deaths sentences to life imprisonment. Life imprisonment allows for early parole. A survey by the Ministry of Justice last year found out that the majority of criminals who were sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison 15 or 16 years before being released.
Official statistics show that in 2004 only two of the 11 people sentenced to death for economic crimes were executed.
Not because the sentence against Liu, a high-ranking railway official from Wuhan city, was too strong but too lenient. The readers, it seems, wanted Liu's head.
"We shouldn't let off some corrupt officials and punish others," argued legal scholar Yan Lieshan in the China Economic Times. "Corrupt officials' lives should be spared only if the capital punishment is negated for all economic crimes. The current practice of punishing some with death while sparing others harms the public's trust in justice."
In China, theft or embezzlement of 500,000 yuan (62,500 US dollars) officially is the threshold for a death sentence. Lawyers say the sentence these days is rarely applied to cases that involve less than three or four million yuan.
With 40 million yuan of embezzled funds, Liu, the railway employee, should have received a mandatory death sentence. Instead, he was given a suspended death sentence in a trial seen by some as casting a shadow over judicial fairness. Liu's punishment was viewed too soft because the government routinely commutes suspended deaths sentences to life imprisonment. Life imprisonment allows for early parole. A survey by the Ministry of Justice last year found out that the majority of criminals who were sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison 15 or 16 years before being released.
Official statistics show that in 2004 only two of the 11 people sentenced to death for economic crimes were executed.
— SOURCES
- (Sources: IPS, 06/06/2006)