Input for SG report on question of the death penalty. March 2022. The SPC has not publicly stated why thousands more cases have been removed, except in a notice on the database website that said it was a “migration” process which would be complete within days.6 This is a blow to judicial transparency in China and further restricts understanding of how legal procedures impact the rights of those facing the death penalty. It restricts lawyers and scholars’ ability to hold the government to account and advocate for legal reform. Persons under the age of 18 years In the Chinese Criminal Law (2021), Article 49, persons under the age of 18 years, at the time of the offence, cannot be sentenced to death. The Rights Practice is not aware of any cases of children under the age of 18 being given the death penalty. However, due to the opacity of the Chinese judicial system and lack of publicly available disaggregated data this cannot be guaranteed. Pregnant women and new mothers The Chinese Criminal Law (2021), Article 49, also clearly states that the death penalty cannot be given to women who are pregnant at the time of trial. There is no legal provision against the execution of new mothers. Courts do not explicitly consider having children or other dependants a mitigating factor at sentencing. Judges have, however, stated that mothers with children under 12 years old will often be given a two-year suspended death sentence, even where the offence is seen as very serious.7 In a small study of 300 Chinese cases involving “drug offences, death sentences and women”, the overwhelming majority of women in the sample were also sentenced to a suspended death sentence. Women sentenced to death for drug crimes were more likely to be the primary caregivers of young children.8 The use of suspended death sentences has reduced the number of executions in China, but there are concerns associated with higher risks of miscarriages of justice.9 Under the criminal law, the suspended death sentence will normally be commuted to either life, or a fixed term imprisonment of 25 years, provided that the prisoner has not committed any intentional crimes in the two-year period. Suspended death sentences are not subject to the Supreme People’s Court review procedures, unlike death sentences with immediate execution. This means they are subject to lower standards of review and this brings higher risks of Xie, Echo. “Millions of court rulings removed from official Chinese database.” South China Morning Post. 26 June 2021. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3138830/millions-court-rulings-removed-officialchinese-database 7 Trevaskes, Susan. “From ‘Killing Many’ to ‘Killing Fewer’” in Liang, Bin and Lu, Hong (eds) The Death Penalty in China: Policy, Practice and Reform, Columbia University Press, 201 8 Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. “No One Believed Me”: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty for Drug Offenses”. October 5, 2021. https://deathpenaltyworldwide.org/publication/no-one-believed-me-a-global-overview-of-women-facing-thedeath-penalty-for-drug-offenses 9 The Rights Practice. “Use of Death Penalty in China: Sentencing”. October 2021. https://www.rightspractice.org/death-sentences-in-china 6 3