Feb. 25
CHINA:
Death penalty cases must be heard in open courts: official
All death penalty appeals must be heard in an open court from the latter
half of this year to better protect human rights, China's chief justice
Xiao Yang announced on Friday.
Xiao made the remarks at a 2-day seminar in Zhengzhou in Central China's
Henan Province, sources with the Supreme People's Court (SPC) revealed.
"The move will ensure justice and caution in death penalty rulings," he
said.
So far, the High People's Courts in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Hainan and
Qinghai have held open sessions on death penalty appeal cases, according
to Xiao, head of SPC.
According to Chinese law, traditionally only intermediate people's courts
at the city level held the power to make the first verdict on death
penalty judgments. Defendants would then appeal the initial judgment to
the high people's court at a provincial level.
The Criminal Procedural Law requires courts to hear in open session all
cases protested by public prosecutors after reviewing the details of the
first death penalty rulings. However, for appeals by the defendant, the
law says that the court should, "in principle," hold an open session, but
a documentary review would suffice if the facts in a case are clear.
In reality, documentary reviews have become the preferred option of most
high courts, and open sessions are an exception, sources said.
The media has exposed several instances of miscarriages of justice in
recent years, which has led to a criticism of the courts' lack of caution
in pronouncing the ultimate punishment.
"Initial open court sessions of death penalty cases during their second
verdict in some provinces and municipalities have proved to be successful.
The Supreme People's Court is confident to spread it nationwide," Xiao
said.
The SPC required all high people's courts to better negotiate with
procuratorates, police and justice administrative departments to get their
support on the issue.
To openly hear death-sentence appeals was only part of the latest moves by
the SPC to ensure caution regarding the death penalty in order to better
protect human rights. The court will withdraw the death sentence review
power this year, Xiao said last month.
China's 1979 edition of the Criminal Procedural Law specified that all
death sentences with immediate execution must be reviewed by the Supreme
People's Court.
However, in a bid to strike hard at criminals, the People's Court
Organizational Law, promulgated in 1983, gave power to the provincial high
people's court to make the final judgement on special immediate execution
cases.
Since then, it has been found that only reviewing death penalty cases at
the provincial level can result in miscarriages of justice.
(source: China Daily)
JAPAN:
Death sentence upheld for man who killed twice
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the death sentence for a man convicted
of two murders and robbery in 1994 and 1995 in Gifu and Mie prefectures.
The Second Petty Bench turned down an appeal from Masuo Yamaguchi, 56,
against a high court decision that overturned his life prison term and
sent him to death row, finalizing the sentence.
Isao Imai, the presiding justice on the 5-justice panel, said, "the crimes
were premeditated, cruel, hard-boiled and brutal, and there is no room for
leniency."
Yamaguchi, in conspiracy with an accomplice, stole 1 million yen in cash
from the home of an antique dealer in the town of Yaotsu, Gifu Prefecture,
in March 1994. In April that year, the 2 murdered a member of their theft
ring in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, and dumped his body into a reservoir,
the Nagoya High Court said in June 2001.
The 2 men were also convicted of murdering another antique dealer in
Yokkaichi in March 1995, stealing 4.3 million yen in cash, and dumping his
body into the same reservoir.
The accomplice, who was sentenced to death at the Nagoya High Court, died
before the Supreme Court ruled on his appeal.
(source: The Japan Times)
AFGHANISTAN:
Afghan Court Sentences Former Spy Chief to Death
In Kakbul, an Afghan court sentenced a former spy chief to death for
killing hundreds of people during communist rule, the 1st such punishment
for war crimes after decades of conflict in the country.
Assadullah Sarwari, who has been detained since 1992 when U.S.-backed
mujahideen (holy warriors) overthrew a Soviet-backed communist regime,
said he would appeal against the verdict.
Chief judge Abdul Basit Bakhtyari drew applause from many in the court on
announcing the judgment.
"Given the evidence, we ... sentence you Sarwari ... to death for killing
hundreds of Muslim and Mujahid people in the feared communist prisons
under your control," Bakhtyari said.
Sporting a short gray and black beard, the 64-year-old Sarwari stood
calmly as the court announced the verdict and said he would appeal.
Sarwari served as head of intelligence when thousands of people were
killed and tortured for opposing the communist regime.
After heading the intelligence network, Sarwari worked as deputy prime
minister and then as Afghanistan's ambassador to Yemen.
The death sentence was the 1st for war crimes in Afghanistan, where
successive regimes have been accused of abuses in 25 years of conflict in
the country.
WAR CRIMES
The judgment came more than two months after President Hamid Karzai's
government adopted a plan to address war crimes and other human rights
abuses committed during the conflict.
The plan envisages setting up a task force to draw up a strategy to deal
with the abuses.
The proposed task force of nominees from Afghanistan's Independent Human
Rights Commission, the United Nations and the Afghan government will have
until the end of next year to present its proposals.
Rights groups have welcomed the action plan, which rules out amnesties for
serious abuses. Concerns had been raised that any suspects in Karzai's
government and a new parliament inaugurated this month might try to block
prosecutions.
In October, a Dutch court jailed two police officers of Afghanistan's
former communist regime for 12 and nine years after convicting them of war
crimes and torture while serving with intelligence services.
The 2 jailed in the Netherlands were Hesamuddin Hesam, the former head of
the Khad secret police between 1983 and 1991, and its head of
interrogation, Habibullah Jalalzoy.
Dutch prosecutors estimated 200,000 political opponents were tortured by
various branches of the Afghan security apparatus under communist rule and
about 50,000 died.
(source: Reuters)
(in) ENGLAND:
Anti-execution campaigner on personal mission
It is a damning indictment of the death penalty, and for Sunny Jacobs it
is very personal.
Not only did she spend 17 years on death row in a U.S. jail for a murder
she did not commit, but her innocent partner Jesse Tafero was put to death
in an execution that lasted 13 minutes and set his head on fire when the
electric chair malfunctioned.
Their story is 1 of 6 equally harrowing tales of wrongful death sentences
and eventual release told in the hit play "Exonerated" that has just
opened in London for a 4-month run.
"There is a time for anger and a time for sadness. But you get through it.
It is toxic," Jacobs, now a frail but determined 57-year-old, told
Reuters. "You can't get away from your past. It follows you. You may as
well try to use it to help others who are feeling as abandoned as I once
was," she added.
Her part in the play, which is told in the words of the death row
innocents, has previously been played by actresses Susan Sarandon and Mia
Farrow among others.
In London she is portrayed by Stockard Channing who admitted it was an odd
experience being watched by someone whose character she is playing but
whom she had never met.
"It has to come from the heart. But it was nice when she accused me of
being too much like her," she said standing next to the diminutive Jacobs
after the performance on Friday which received a standing ovation.
Jacobs and Tafero were convicted of murdering a Florida highway patrolman
in February 1976 on the false evidence of convicted felon Walter Rhodes
who actually committed the murders but fingered them in return for a
lighter sentence.
Rhodes recanted his testimony three times, in 1977, 1979 and again in
1982, admitting that he not they fired the fatal shots.
But Tafero was put to death in May 1990 -- in an execution that needed the
switch sending 2,200 volts through his body to be thrown three times over
13 minutes, finally sending flames out of the top of his head and smoke
pouring from his ears.
He was posthumously cleared, and Jacobs was finally released in 1992 when
a combination of Rhodes recantations and a new study of the crime scene
convinced the reluctant authorities that the convictions had been utterly
without foundation.
For the 14 years until his execution, Tafero and Jacobs wrote tender love
letters to each other from their respective jails.
To keep the sexually explicit parts of the correspondence away from the
prying eyes of the prison censors they each acquired Japanese dictionaries
and used that language as their secret code.
None of the people portrayed in the play have ever received any
compensation, and all still bear the emotional -- and in at least one case
physical -- scars of their experiences.
Jacobs, a self-confessed hippy, hopes the play and her life will help
serve as a monument against the death penalty that she has always seen as
barbaric.
"I want to be a living memorial," the bespectacled, gray-haired
grandmother said, echoing her character's closing lines in the play.
(source: Reuters)
