Proposal to abolish death penalty for 7 types of crimes

Chairman of the National Assembly's Judiciary Committee Nguyen Van Hien said that the majority of the Judiciary Committee's opinions agree with the Government's Proposal on the direction of reducing the death penalty.

Continuing the working program, on the morning of April 7, the National Assembly Standing Committee gave opinions on the draft Penal Code (amended).

One of the important contents that received many opinions was the amendment and supplementation of regulations on the death penalty in the direction of continuing to institutionalize the policy of limiting the death penalty as determined in the Party's Resolutions on judicial reform, especially Resolution No. 49/NQ-TW and closely following the spirit of the 2013 Constitution on human rights and basic rights of citizens.

The draft also strictly regulates the conditions for applying the death penalty to narrow the scope of application of this penalty, accordingly the death penalty is only applied to certain subjects who commit certain types of particularly serious crimes.

Abolish the death penalty for 7 crimes

The draft Code abolishes the death penalty for the following crimes: robbery; destruction of important works, facilities, and means related to national security; disobeying orders; surrendering to the enemy; sabotaging peace, waging aggressive wars; crimes against humanity; and war crimes.

At the same time, the draft Code separates the crime of transporting, storing, illegally trading or appropriating narcotics (Article 194 of the current Penal Code) into separate crimes and only retains the death penalty for the crime of illegally trading narcotics. For other crimes, the highest penalty is life imprisonment.

Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Nguyen Van Hien suggested carefully considering the regulation to expand the cases where the death penalty is not carried out.

Chairman of the National Assembly's Judicial Committee Nguyen Van Hien said that the majority of the Judicial Committee's opinions agreed with the Government's proposal on reducing the death penalty to demonstrate the State's humanity and to achieve judicial reform goals. Accordingly, 7/22 crimes with the death penalty will be abolished as proposed by the Government.

Another opinion is that it is possible to consider abolishing the death penalty for other crimes of a profit-making nature such as: production and trade of counterfeit food, medicine, and disease prevention drugs, but the death penalty should not be abolished for the following crimes: Crime of undermining peace, waging aggressive war; Crimes against humanity; War crimes.

“Because this is the most serious crime among the especially serious crimes and in terms of political significance and correlation with other groups of crimes, as long as the death penalty is maintained, the death penalty should not be abolished for these crimes,” said Mr. Nguyen Van Hien.

The agency reviewing the draft law also believes that the reality of the fight against drugs over the years has shown that this type of crime is increasingly organized in a more sophisticated and professional manner. Accordingly, the stages from production, storage, transportation, and consumption are organized very tightly. If only the death penalty is prescribed for those who illegally buy and sell drugs, the effectiveness of the fight and handling will be reduced; because in reality, it is mainly the transporters and storers who are arrested, but it is difficult to prove the buyers and sellers. Therefore, the death penalty should not be abolished for the masterminds and leaders in the drug transport and storage ring.

Avoid using money instead of the death penalty

Another notable point in the draft Code is the addition of a category of people who are not subject to the death penalty when they commit a crime or are tried.

According to Minister Ha Hung Cuong, adding this subject to the list of subjects not subject to the death penalty demonstrates a humane criminal policy towards those who have reached the age of majority - subjects entitled to the State's longevity and longevity celebration regime; and are given special privileges to enjoy social protection policies.

Chairman of the Judicial Committee Nguyen Van Hien said that there were opinions in the Judicial Committee agreeing with the above regulation. However, other opinions said that there should be specific differentiation of crime groups and specific crime cases to apply, ensuring effectiveness in preventing and fighting against crime.

In addition, the draft Code also expands the cases where the death penalty is not carried out and converts the death penalty into life imprisonment. Accordingly, in addition to the two subjects, pregnant women and women raising children under 36 months old as currently regulated, two more subjects are added: People aged 70 and over; people sentenced to death who are not among the above subjects but after being sentenced have actively overcome the consequences of the crime they committed, voluntarily handed over to the State at least half of the money and property obtained from the crime, actively cooperated with the authorities in detecting, investigating, and handling crimes or made great achievements.

The UBTP believes that the addition of a provision that the death penalty is not to be carried out in the above case needs careful consideration, because there are no problems with the implementation in practice. If it is necessary to add this condition to reduce the death penalty in practice, there needs to be differentiation and exclusion of specific subjects, avoiding the tendency that in all cases money can be used to escape the death penalty./.

According to VOV