China rejects Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg’s appeal against drug smuggling death penalty
- Court upholds ruling of 2019 retrial, which had found the original sentence of 15 years in prison to be too lenient
- Canada’s ambassador to China says the ruling and the trials of Michaels Kovrig and Spavor are linked to the Meng Wanzhou extradition case in Vancouver
The Liaoning Higher People’s Court in northeastern China said on Tuesday that it had rejected the appeal on the basis that Schellenberg’s crime of smuggling methamphetamine constituted a grave danger to society.
Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China, said in Liaoning after the court’s ruling that he “condemned in the strongest possible terms” the rejection of Schellenberg’s appeal.
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“We remain deeply concerned by China’s arbitrary use of the death penalty for Robert Schellenberg,” Barton said, adding that his country would continue to provide consular assistance.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has been hearing the final arguments in Meng’s extradition case.
The chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has been fighting extradition to the United States after being arrested at the request of the American authorities.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these are happening right now while events are going on in Vancouver,” Barton said when asked about the cases’ link to Meng.
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He said that Schellenberg was “remarkably composed” after his appeal was rejected.
Zhang Dongshuo, the lawyer representing Schellenberg, said the death penalty would now be reviewed by the People‘s Supreme Court with three possible outcomes. The first is the capital punishment, which is approved to go ahead. The second is that the case is sent back to the lower court for another retrial. The Supreme People’s Court could also overrule the lower court and hand out its own verdict, such as a lighter sentence.
“It‘s very hard to say which outcome is more likely. I think this will depend more on factors outside of the legal proceedings,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post.
The review is not under any time constraint. The judges can take anywhere between several months to several years to come to a decision, according to Zhang.
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Schellenberg was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking in 2014 in the southern city of Guangzhou. The court said in its published summaries of the case that Schellenberg was involved in an international operation that attempted to move drugs from China to Australia hidden inside tyres.
It said Schellenberg had 222kg (490lbs) of methamphetamine with him when he tried to flee from China to Thailand after an alleged co-conspirator had alerted the police.
The Dalian Intermediate People’s Court in November 2018 found him guilty, sentenced him to 15 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 yuan (US$23,000), and ordered that he be deported.
Schellenberg later appealed against the sentence to the Liaoning Higher People’s Court, which ordered a retrial in the Dalian court after prosecutors argued the sentence was too lenient.
The retrial in January 2019, weeks after Meng’s arrest in Vancouver, resulted in the death penalty and the confiscation of all of Schellenberg’s personal property.
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Schellenberg‘s retrial was highly unusual. The prosecution first accused Schellenberg of being an accessory to trafficking drugs in Dalian, in northeastern China. Prosecutors did not mention he was part of an international drug-smuggling ring during the first trial. On this basis, he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, Zhang said.
In the retrial, which took place weeks after Meng’s arrest in Canada, the prosecution claimed Schellenberg was a critical part of a criminal group that trafficked drugs in several parts of China, including Guangdong and Zhejiang. However, the court did not establish that he was the leader of the group, he said.
Zhang said that under Chinese law Schellenberg could only be charged for the crimes he himself had committed in Dalian, and not the crimes of the others in the criminal group if he was not their leader. “This is not legal. The death penalty was handed down for crimes for which Schellenberg should not have been responsible.”
