Police officers rehearse executing prisoners with a shot to the head. Now lethal injections will be used more
Jane McCartney, China Correspondent
China is to increase the use of lethal injections for condemned prisoners to replace execution by a bullet in the back of the head.
The decision by the country that probably executes about four times more people a year than the rest of the world combined was taken on humanitarian grounds, authorities said. Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, said: “It will eventually be used in all intermediate people’s courts.”
At present China’s Supreme Court regulates carefully the allocation of the cocktail of drugs needed to carry out lethal injections. Local court officials must come to Beijing to obtain doses of the drug, a cost that may deter many judicial authorities and encourage them to stick with the less time-consuming gunshot.
Mr Jiang said that this would now change. The Supreme Court, he said, would “help equip intermediate courts with all required facilities”.
The use of lethal injections has risen steadily since they were introduced in the southwestern city of Kunming in 1997 after careful experimentation. Nonetheless, it is believed that as many as 60 per cent of all executions are still carried out by firing squad.
At least under the newer method the family of the condemned prisoner will not be expected to pay for the drugs. In the past the family of the condemned prisoner would be sent a bill for the bullet used in the execution. It is believed China uses a three-drug mix similar to the one used in most US states: sodium thiopental to bring on unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and potassium chloride to halt the heart. State media have described the cocktail as a drug that brings about death without pain. Special vans have been designed to serve as mobile execution units that can travel between remote towns and cities.
The number of people executed in China remains a highly guarded state secret. Amnesty International estimates that the country put to death at least 1,010 people in 2006 out of a worldwide total of 1,591. That figure is based on executions that were reported publicly and is thought to exclude many other cases that went unmentioned by local media. The human rights group cites some sources as putting the real figure at between 7,500 to 8,000 people.
China says that the number of executions dropped in 2007 after a rule introduced last January required the Supreme People’s Court to review every execution order. The decision by the top court to withdraw a power it had relinquished to provincial courts during a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s came after several widely publicised wrongful convictions triggered a wave of public anger.
Lethal force
— 69 countries practise execution by shooting
— 30 executions by shooting were recorded last year: 15 in Afghanistan, 8 in Yemen, 3 in Somalia and 1 each in Belarus, Ethiopia, Indonesia and North Korea. China does not publish figures, but is thought to have executed about four times as many people as the rest of the world combined
— 68 crimes are punishable by death in China. They include murder, publishing pornography and killing a panda
— 30p is the average cost of a bullet used to execute Chinese prisoners – for which the relatives were expected to pay
— £33,000 is the cost of mobile “death vans” in which lethal injections are administered in China
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