China raises corruption threshold for death penalty
The move updates standards enshrined in the Criminal Law about two decades ago
Mainland authorities have raised the graft bar for officials to face the firing squad to 3 million yuan (HK$3.6 million), under new judicial guidelines.
In the past, officials convicted of accepting bribes totalling 100,000 yuan could have been sentenced to death.
Defendants convicted of “especially serious” offences of graft of between 1.5 million yuan and 3 million yuan, including embezzling disaster relief funds, embezzling money for illegal activities or refusing to hand over illicit funds, could also face the death penalty under the new rules.
The Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly issued the amended criteria as a supplement to the revised Criminal Law.
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The new standards replace those set out in the Criminal Law in 1997, which have long been criticised as being out of date after years of inflation and income growth.
Despite the low threshold, an immediate death penalty has seldom been imposed on senior corrupt officials in recent years. Instead, they have been more likely to be given death sentences suspended for two years. Suspended sentences can later be commuted to life imprisonment if no additional offences are committed during the suspension period. Life terms can also be reduced.