| China's top court has rejected 15 percent of death sentences handed by lower courts, citing poor evidence and procedural errors under new rules, but a top judge said the death penalty will remain in place for a long time. China keeps secret the number of prisoners it executes, but international human rights observers have no doubt it judicially kills more than any other country -- with estimates of executions somewhere between 1,000 and 12,000 a year in recent times. But from the start of 2007, China's Supreme People's Court took back power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and promised to apply the ultimate punishment more carefully. In a rare glimpse into how the new rule is working, the president of the top court's criminal law chamber, Huang Ermei, said that in 2007 it rejected 15 percent of death sentences passed by lower courts, according to the China News Service on Saturday. She gave no hint of the overall number of executions. |
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