Death sentence with reprieve (,

abbr An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing perio ...

: ) is a

criminal punishment Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the Rehabilitation (penology), rehabilitation of of ...

found in chapter 5 (death penalty), sections 48, 50 and 51 of the criminal

law of the People's Republic of China The Law of the People's Republic of China, officially referred to as the socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, is the legal regime of China, with the separate legal traditions and systems of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. C ...

. It is a two-year

suspended sentence A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that ...

where the

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in ...

is only carried out if the convicted commits further crimes during the suspension period. After the period the sentence is automatically reduced to

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...

, or to a fixed-term based on meritorious behavior. The reprieve is integrated into the sentence, unlike a

pardon A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the j ...

which occurs after the sentence. Chinese courts hand down this form of sentencing as frequently as, or more often than, actual death sentences. The sentence emphasizes the severity of the crime and the mercy of the court, and comes from traditional Chinese jurisprudence. According to researchers, the post-2007 death penalty reforms resulted in a larger proportion of death sentences becoming suspended. Based on the 2024 sentencing of

Yang Hengjun Yang Hengjun ( born 1965), legally known as Yang Jun (), is a Chinese-Australian writer and businessman who is imprisoned by Chinese authorities on spying charges. Yang was born in China and worked for the Ministry of State Security there for ...

to death with reprieve for espionage charges, Ryan Mitchell, a law professor at the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as the University of ...

, stated that death with reprieve was used in recent years to reduce the rate of executions without abolishing capital punishment. He also stated that such sentences were typically reserved for serious crimes with potentially serious social consequences, and that they were rarely commuted to fixed-term imprisonment. The 2015 criminal law amendment allowed sentences to restrict commutation to only life imprisonment ''without'' possibility of parole, for convictions of bribery or "plundering the public treasury". This was the case with

Bai Enpei Bai Enpei (; born 8 September 1946) is a former Chinese politician convicted of corruption. Bai served as the Chinese Communist Party Deputy Committee Secretary of Inner Mongolia between 1993 and 1997, Governor and later Party Secretary of Qingh ...

and

Fu Zhenghua Fu Zhenghua ( zh, s=傅政华; born March 1955) is a former Chinese politician and public security officer. He was convicted of taking bribes and bending the law for personal gain in September 2022, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Previ ...

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* -

Working paper A working paper or work paper may be: *A working paper or technical paper. This encompasses literature that has not been peer reviewed or published in an academic journal. Working papers may be disseminated for the purpose of receiving feedback ...

Capital punishment in China de:Todesstrafe#Volksrepublik China {{China-poli-stub Law of the People's Republic of China

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