The Road Of The Abolition Of The Death Penalty In China

As the oldest and severest punishment, the death penalty must be abolished completely in the future. The death penalty is a kind of punishment with unavoidable weakness:The death penalty has run counter with humanitarianism. The death penalty will lose its foundation with the popularity of the ideas of basic rights in the world and the idea of humanitarianism has been fully accepted by the majority of countries. The argument that the death penalty has the greatest deterrent force has little ground in the theory and practice. Other kinds of punishment also have the function to prevent offences from happening. From the economic perspective, the death penalty execution spend larger amount of money than the freedom punishment. The negative effects are also greater than its active effects. The application of death penalty may lead to the unbalance between the cost and the benefit. There are many causes for the happening of the crimes, including the social cause, the individual cause, and the cause of the victims and system. It is unequal to only make the criminals take all responsibilities. The conditions for the complete abolition of death penalty are obviously immature and insufficient, although the stable status of death penalty has been shaken. The death penalty can’t be abolished completely in a short time. The China should make great efforts to restrict firstly and then abandon death penalty. Philosophy of discretion of punishment has played its special role in the process. The failure in the practice of severe punishment and the international trend to abandon death penalty has promoted the reform of the restriction of death penalty. The idea has been proved that it is necessary and possible to guide public opinions rationally. The efficacy of capital punishment applied to crimes can be restricted to the maximum extent by many methods, such as applying the system of pardon and death penalty with a reprieve, confining the object of death penalty, disassembling the names of crimes, applying the suspension procedure of the death sentence and so on. Our country should abolish the death penalty step by step, and in order when the conditions for the abolition of death penalty are fully mature. The abolition of death penalty for the non-violent crimes can be taken into schedule at first based on the international trend, the present death punishment policy of China and the principle of necessity and value evaluation. According to the different types of characteristics, the step can be designed as follows:economic crimes-the crimes by taking advantage of duty-drug crimes-the crimes of jeopardizing the public security, the crimes of endangering the nation security, the crimes of endangering the interests of nation defense, the crimes of violation of duty by military personnel. The death penalty for the violent crime should be abolished when we achieve the goal of the improvement of the social civilization and advancement. We can divide the violent crimes into non-lethal violent crimes, negligent lethal crimes and the intentional lethal crimes, crimes committed in exceptional circumstances such as wartime. Firstly, the crimes not endangering the basic rights of the person should be annulled at once in legislation. The negligent lethal crimes can be abolished at the appropriate time. Secondly, it need disassemble the names of crimes to the intentional lethal crimes and crimes committed in exceptional circumstances such as wartime by restructuring legislative technology. Our country should conform to the world’ trend to abolish the death penalty applying to these crimes when the vast majority of moderately developed countries all accomplish the abolition of death penalty finally.