Effective Defense in Death Penalty Cases: An Empirical Analysis Based on 6 517 Verdicts

The empirical analysis of 6 517 death penalty verdicts finds that the death penalty cases have the general characteristics such as a large difference in the distribution of death penalty cases and court hearings in each province between different years, death penalty defendants being mainly young and middle-aged males and mostly having below-junior high school education, and a certain proportion of special death penalty defendants as well as the specific characteristics such as a considerable number of cases where the defense opinions are either monotonous or all rejected. The reasons for this are that the criminal policy on death penalty and the defense opinions do not fully match, the effectiveness of defense in death penalty cases still needs to be greatly improved, and the overall consideration of the victim's fault needs to be strengthened. In this regard, the practical path of effective defense in death penalty cases can be developed under the logical framework of "class judgment", taking into full consideration the overall criminal policy and the specific criminal policy of death penalty cases, the culture of the death penalty and social opinion, the degree of correlation between the personal factors of the perpetrator and the specific crime cases, and the the victim's fault, etc., and judicial officers should pay attention to defense opinions and create positive and strong conditions for the defense.