CHINA: LAW EXPERTS OPPOSE SENTENCE OF IMMEDIATE EXECUTION

October 21, 2016: Several Chinese law experts have voiced their opposition to the immediate execution of a suspect who was sentenced to death for killing a village chief after his house was demolished, 20 days before his wedding.  The Supreme People's Court (SPC) approved the death sentence of Jia Jinglong, a villager in Shijiazhuang, capital of North China's Hebei Province, in August and the ruling was delivered to Jia's lawyer Wei Rujiu on October 18.  According to a copy of the SPC's verdict sent to the Global Times on October 20, Jia bought and modified three nail guns after his house was demolished during the village's reconstruction campaign in 2013, and used them to kill He Jianhua, the village chief, in February 2015 for revenge.  The method of the murder was extremely cruel and caused severe social impact, said the ruling, adding that the conviction was appropriate and accurate.  However, Wei told the Global Times that Jia's house was maliciously removed, which was illegal, and directly led the man "who had lived a peaceful life" to commit a criminal homicide.  The order of immediate execution also sparked debates in China's legal field, with some professors arguing the penalty was too harsh. 
"Apart from personal reasons, the killing was also an institutional failure. Any ordinary person could resort to the same means as Jia when facing unfair treatment," said Zhang Qianfan, a law professor with Peking University. 
China strictly controls the death penalty and employs it with prudence, said a white paper in September, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The white paper, titled New Progress in the Judicial Protection of Human Rights in China, said China's stand on the death penalty is to ensure that it applies only to a very small number of extremely serious criminal offenders. (Source: Global Times, 21/10/2016)