On March 23, the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines
announced that it had been notified that three Filipinos
sentenced to death in China on drug smuggling charges would be executed
on March 30.
The notice, formally communicated by the Fujian High People’s Court and
Guangdong High People’s Court to the Philippine consulates general in
Xiamen and Guangzhou, clarified the status of the three, identified as
Ramon Credo, Elizabeth Batain, and Sally Villanueva.
The three death row prisoners, convicted of trying to smuggle several
kilograms of heroin to China, had originally been scheduled for
execution in late February but won a temporary reprieve when the
Supreme People’s Court (SPC) reportedly agreed to postpone the
executions after Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay traveled to
Beijing to plead on their behalf.
Earlier this month, China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Liu Jianchao, made
clear that the verdicts were final and the executions would take place
“sooner or later.”
A presidential spokesman described the decision to stay the executions
as “unprecedented” and acknowledged that officials in Manila understood
from the beginning that the executions were only to be postponed.
Just how “unprecedented” was the decision? That depends in part on
the justification behind it, which remains opaque. To the extent that
news about the cases has been reported in the
Chinese media (here, for example), it has been on the basis of reports from the Phillipine
side. To date, neither the Supreme People’s Court nor the provincial
high courts in Fujian or Guangdong have offered any official
explanation regarding the legal basis for the delay.
According to Article 211 of the Criminal Procedure Law, executions
approved by the Supreme People’s Court are supposed to be carried out
within seven days. The law sets out three circumstances under which an
execution may be halted, once the SPC order has been issued: discovery
of an error in the court’s judgment, revelation of major crimes or
other meritorious behavior that could affect sentencing, or pregnancy.
It is unclear which of these conditions applied in this instance.
Temporary stays of execution are not routinely reported in the Chinese
media, but they are not unheard of. A few weeks ago, it was reported
that the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong had halted the
execution of a man in January 2010 after he made a final claim that he
had not committed the fatal robbery for which he had been convicted.
The court empaneled judges to investigate the man’s claims and, after
finding them not credible, finally carried out the execution on March
16.
Some have speculated that China’s decision to delay execution of the Filipinos was a
response to various “gestures” made by the Philippine government, such
as the decision not to send a representative to last December’s Nobel
Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo and the extradition of Taiwanese criminal
suspects to China.
If the executions were halted for diplomatic or humanitarian, rather
than legal reasons, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It would,
however, be out of keeping with the way Chinese courts normally profess
to operate “in strict accordance with the law.” For that reason it would be enlightening
to have the SPC itself come forward to explain the unusual
circumstances surrounding this case in order and inject some
transparency into the proceedings.