Chinese drug official sentenced to death

On May 29, 2007, Zheng Xiaoyu, a one-time shining light in the field of pharmaceuticals in China who became head of the State Pharmaceutical Administration in 1994, was found guilty of accepting $820,000 (U.S.) in bribes and thereby permitting pharmaceutical companies in China to circumvent safety tests and take their drugs directly to market. The court said Zheng's actions had undermined the efficiency of China's drug monitoring and supervision protocols and for this reason, his actions endangered the public health of the people in China and elsewhere in the world. At least 10 people died as a result of Zheng's actions, but many more deaths are suspected. What is expected is an enormous loss of pharmaceutical and food imports to other countries costing China and their businesses alike, billions of dollars a year in trade.

Confidence in Chinese food and drug exports has taken several blows in recent weeks, following a number of troubling events. First it was melamine-laced foods from China killing pets in North America. Then it emerged that cough syrup containing diethylene glycol from China had killed dozens of people in Panama. And then, just last week, U.S. officials began checking Chinese toothpaste over fears that it could contain toxic chemicals. Officials in three U.S. states have also banned catfish from China after tests showed they contained traces of antibiotics.

The people in China are deeply dissatisfied with the pharmaceutical industry for producing "fake medicines" and "bribing hospitals" to buy their drugs as commercial bribery is widespread in the pharmaceutical industry in China.

If he was an official in Canada or the US, he would be sentenced to ten years to life in prison. However, in China, they don’t always extend that kind of wrist slapping on such criminals. On May 29th, Xiaoyu was sentenced to death.

Executions are in many cases, carried out after the sentence is passed. The executions are public. The condemned man is taken to an execution field in the outskirts of the city in which he was sentenced and made to kneel on the ground while blindfolded with his arms secured behind his back. An executioner then steps up behind him and points his rifle at the back of the condemned man’s head and fires a bullet into his head. Death is instantaneous.

Because his death sentence was handed down by an intermediate court, it will, under Chinese law, automatically be reviewed by a higher court. And the state's Supreme Court will make the final decision to either uphold or rescind. If the decision to execute is upheld, he will be executed within hours of the final decision being handed down. I strongly doubt that the sentence of death will be rescinded.

The question that comes to the fore is; Is a death sentence in a case like this appropriate?

The People’s Republic of China continues to carry out more judicial executions than the rest of the world combined. In addition, despite having the largest population in the world, China possibly executes a higher proportion of its population than any other country, except for Singapore, which has one of the smallest populations.

Many of the condemned prisoners in China are executed for economic crimes such as corruption. For example, in 2007, a Chinese company chairman was sentenced to death for running a scam involving giant ants. The ants are used in traditional medicines and remedies in parts of China. Wang Zhendong promised investors returns of up to 60% if they put money into the fictitious ant-breeding project. More than 10,000 investors signed 100,000 contracts with the company before the case was investigated in June 2005. Millions of dollars were lost by the investors in the scam.

In 2001, Zhang Jun, the deputy Minister of Justice for China said that the most feasible way to reform the Chinese punishment system is to set up more long-term prison sentences. I presented that same view in an address I gave at a UN crime conference held in Caracas, Venezuela in 1980.

Torture by police in China is rife, but there is no provision under Chinese law to exclude from court ‘confessions’ or other ‘evidence’ extorted through torture. In practice, there is no presumption of innocence. Torture is prohibited under Chinese law, but still it is pandemic, and ‘evidence’ extracted through torture and other illegal means continues to be used to sentence people to death.

Behind these facts lies a criminal justice system that cannot and does not guarantee a fair trial under international law to defendants. Often defendants are denied their right to legal representation until after they have been interrogated, and even then, access to the prisoners by their lawyers is fraught with delays.

The period of pre-arrest or pre-trial detention is often arbitrary, lasting in one extreme case for 28 years. Of course, China isn’t the only country where defendants wait long periods of time for their trials. When I was in Caracas in 1980, I interviewed a prisoner in a local jail who had been waiting in jail for eighteen months just to be charged with an offence. I learned of another man who waited in that same jail for ten years for his trial and finally when he was tried, he was acquitted. The following day, when I was in the home of Venezuela’s Minister of Justice, I mentioned these two cases to him. He agreed that his nation has to make improvements in their justice system. There’s an understatement if I ever heard one.

Despite these obvious variances with international law and standards, China continues to execute huge numbers of people. Indeed, a recent decision to promote lethal injection as a means of execution nationwide was reported in some quarters in China as a “cost-effective” and more efficient alternative to execution by bullet, possibly facilitating even higher rates of execution. Mobile execution chambers are also being used extensively throughout China – converted buses in which convicts can be executed by lethal injection “immediately after sentence is passed.

Now back to the question of whether or not Zheng Xiaoyu should be executed. If anyone ever deserved to be executed, it is him. No doubt a great many people in China and elsewhere in the world have probably died as an indirect result of his corruption.

Personally, I would rather have him imprisoned for natural life and at hard labor at that. However, in all likelihood, the higher court will not rescind the order for his execution and he will be taken to an execution field and before hundreds of spectators, shot like the dog he is.

The state Supreme Court concluded that death was an appropriate sentence and on July 11, 2007, Zheng Xiaoyu was executed. The others received life sentences.