The Rights Practice welcomes the move by the Supreme People’s Court to take back its powers to review all death sentences. However, China continues to execute more people than any other country still using the death penalty. Capital crimes include non-violent offences. Statistics on China’s use of the death penalty, however, remain a state secret.

The Rights Practice has worked on initiatives to strengthen the defence of defendants in death penalty cases in China and the quality of their legal aid. In 2003 we published an analysis of the application of the death penalty in China to inform our work in this area.

Chinese law prohibits the execution of anyone mentally ill at the time of committing an offence, yet recent cases have indicated procedural shortcomings in the way mental illness is assessed within the criminal justice system. We are currently working with Chinese partners to explore the way assessment procedures could be strengthened to ensure no one with a mental disability is executed.