|
Beijing: China's top court has interrogated a death penalty defendant via a video link for the first time since a key legal reform aimed at averting wrongful executions, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.
In January 2007, the Supreme People's Court reserved the power of final approval on death penalties that had been relinquished to provincial high courts in the 1980s and promised to exercise extreme caution while handing out death sentences.
The reform, prompted by public outcry over a series of high-profile but wrongful death sentences in recent years, had greatly increased the top court's workload, Chinese media reported.
"The Supreme People's Court judges have had to travel to places across the country to meet defendants. It is both time-consuming and costly," Xinhua quoted an unnamed official from the top court as saying.
The top court yesterday questioned Jiang Huaquan, sentenced to death for drug trafficking in the southeastern province of Fujian, from Beijing through a video link, Xinhua said.
"Distance interrogation can not only ensure face-to-face communication but also boost efficiency of the final review work maximally," the official was quoted as saying.
Procedural errors spotted
The questioning process would be recorded and judges would still travel to detention centres to personally meet defendants when necessary, the official said.
The Supreme People's Court rejected 15 per cent of the death penalties it reviewed in 2007, citing poor evidence and procedural errors.
Chinese courts also, for the first time, handed down more suspended death sentences, usually commuted to life imprisonment on condition of good behaviour, than outright executions last year. The results have been welcomed by legal experts.
|
