China: Executions in Contaminated milk cases

A year ago I was about to leave for China - to bring word of New Jersey's repeal of the death penalty (the stars had lined up for Jon Corzine and pro-repeal legislative leaders in December 2007). I was eager to spread the gospel of New Jersey as a Herald of Change.

Student audiences, academics, and prosecutors generally embraced a gradualist approach. They were encouraged by the Supreme People's Court's 2005 statement of policy "kill fewer, kill carefully", and the commitment of the SPC to review all death sentences. Reductions had already been accomplished the government reported - 30% by one estimate (though the PRC's secrecy is such that we don't know 30% of what number).

The people, we were told, demand the the death penalty. Probably true. You could get a pro-death penalty vote in New Jersey if you asked about the planners of 9/11. The mass killings of 197 in riots in Xinjiang - mostly Uighur against Han, it appears, have led to a dozen death sentences - carefully balanced to include wrongdoers on both sides of the ethnic divide. Here and Here - verdicts with which China Daily declared no one could argue.

Now comes news of two executions in the SanLu contaminated milk scandal. In that scandalous episode 6 children died and 300,000 were sickened by defective products of a major infant formula company. According to the NY Times account:

"The authorities described the two men who were executed, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, as among the biggest culprits of the scandal. Mr. Zhang was found guilty of selling more than 1.3 million pounds of tainted milk powder from July 2007 to August 2008, and Mr. Geng was convicted of selling more than 1.9 million pounds of contaminated product.

Nineteen others were tried and sentenced in January for their roles in the scheme. Fifteen of them were imprisoned for terms of 2 to 15 years. One received a suspended death sentence, and three received life sentences."

The Chinese courts seem to be using rules of thumb: the most egregious offenders get the most severe punishment, and the scale slides down. This has a surface appearance of fairness. Defense attorneys in capital cases will doubtless recognize the futility of a direct assault and will have to focus on the arbitrariness of the imposition of death sentences. For example - in the SanLu cases "substantial certainty" that someone will die sufficed. In the Xinjiang cases some killers were executed and others spared.

The guidelines issued by the Supreme People's Court in drug cases make distinctions based on quantity, whether children were involved, etc. But looking across the range a coherent pattern does not emerge: some who personally killed are spared; others who risked grave or fatal harm to others are not. Such divisions may be ground which Chinese capital defense lawyers can till. - GWC