National Assembly considers reducing number of death penalty-applied crimes

Lawmakers are deliberating changes to the Penal Code at the 15th National Assembly (NA)’s 9th session on May 27 morning, including a proposal to reduce the number of crimes punishable by the death penalty.

A highlight of the proposed amendment is the removal of the capital punishment from 8 out of 18 crimes, replacing them with life imprisonment.

The eight crimes expected to be exempted from the death penalty provisions include activities aimed at overthrowing the people's administration (Article 109), destructing material and technical infrastructure of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Article 114), producing and selling counterfeit medicines (Article 194), sabotaging peace and causing aggressive war (Article 421), espionage (Article 110), illegal drug trafficking (Article 250), embezzlement of property (Article 353), and accepting bribes (Article 354).

In its proposal, the Government recognised the death penalty provisions in the current law prove several inadequacies. Specifically, the penalty ranges, spanning 20 years’ imprisonment to life sentence or death penalty, is rather broad, making the application challenging. The Government noted that in many cases, life imprisonment appears too lenient in the face of serious crimes while death penalty proves excessively harsh and incompatible with the Party and State’s policy of limiting the execution of capital punishment.

Currently, the Penal Code retains death sentences for 18 crimes. However, judicial practice over recent years have indicated that some of these crimes, despite their severity, have not warranted such extreme measure such as activities aimed at overthrowing the administration and production of counterfeit medicines. In others, like embezzlement and bribery, capital punishment has been rarely imposed.

The proposed alternative of life imprisonment without sentence reduction will maintain the goal of separating serious offenders from society while meeting crime prevention and deterrence objectives, according to the Government’s document.

In the afternoon, the NA will listen to proposals and verification reports on draft Law on Emergency and revised Railway Law. After that deputies will discuss in groups a draft law on amendments and supplements to certain articles of the Criminal Procedure Code.