What is the point of adding a few years of probation to a death sentence? I read (mirror): A total of 44 Japanese drug-related criminals were arrested by China in 2014, 33 of which have been given corresponding sentences, five people were executed, and six were given death sentence with two years' probation. What is the point of adding a few years of probation to a death sentence?
This is a traditional Chinese sentence which in practice is similar to a suspended sentence: Mainland Chinese courts hand down the sentence of &quot;death sentence with two years' probation&quot; (Chinese: 死缓; pinyin: sǐ huǎn) as frequently as, or more often than, they do actual death sentences. This unique sentence is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court, and has a centuries-old history in Chinese jurisprudence. It is almost always reduced to life or 10 to 15 years imprisonment if no new crime is intentionally committed during the two year probationary period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China
Do these offences exist,... None exist for civilian offences since 1976 and for miltary offences since 1999. All death penalties have been lowered to life imprisonment and for any conviction after that point in time only the lower punishment would apply. Since 1963, all convictions where the death penalty did apply, were commuted to life imprisonment. So there are no cases open where the death penalty would still apply. You cannot be convicted for a crime that no longer exists (repealed). You cannot be sentenced to a punishment that no longer applies (lowered). Nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without law) - Wikipedia After the Confederation period (1867), the number of offences punishable by death were reduced to three: murder, rape, and treason. The last execution took place on the 1962-12-11. After that all death sentences were commuted as a matter of policy. The abolition of the death penalty for murder, treason, and piracy came into force on the 1976-07-26. Other military offences (cowardice, desertion, unlawful surrender, and spying for the enemy), if committed traitorously, still existed until September 1999 (the last one was carried out in 1945). Capital punishment in Canada - Wikipedia The death penalty was de facto abolished in Canada in January 1963 and de jure in September 1999.
After a defendant is convicted at trial in a federal court and when the death penalty is off the table (if it's on the table there's a different process), a sentencing process starts. This process is based around the US Sentencing Guidelines, which is a book of rules to calculate how serious all of the defendant's conduct was (on a scale of 1 to 43) and how to combine that with their criminal history to determine a recommended sentence range. The federal probation office investigates the details of the crime and produces a report applying the guidelines to the defendant; each side can make objections to this report (e.g. the defense might claim the defendant really had a minor role in the crime, while the prosecution might claim that he abused a position of trust), and the report and objections go to the judge. The probation office might also produce a sentence recommendation, which goes to the judge and might or might not go to the parties (it depends on the court). At sentencing, the judge reviews the report and gives each side a chance to comment on it. She has to consider all of this in issuing a sentence, and if there are any disputes she has to resolve them. However, she's free to make her own decisions on applying the Guidelines even if the probation office, prosecution, and defense all agreed on something else. Also, she can depart from the Guidelines range under rules laid out in the Guidelines, or she can set it aside entirely and issue what she considers to be an appropriate sentence between the statutory minimum and statutory maximum. For plea bargains, it can work differently (but doesn't have to). Most plea bargains will say something about sentencing, but it can be either a recommendation or a binding agreement. If it's a recommendation, the judge will consider it but can make her own decisions just like if the defendant was convicted at trial (and this isn't grounds to withdraw the plea). If it's binding, the judge can still choose to accept or reject the plea bargain. If she accepts it, she has to sentence based on the agreement; if she rejects it, the defendant can withdraw his plea.
I would just like to clarify, in addition to the other answers and what Dale M alluded to, one important detail: Unless you are carrying out the death penalty, no one under any circumstances is allowed to kill anyone else. What you are sometimes authorized to do, is to use deadly force. There is an important distinction between the two. When using deadly force, you are using extreme force to stop someone doing something, which may result in getting that person killed, but killing isn't the point, stopping whatever he is doing is. If instead of a knife you had a gun on the train, you shot the guy in the face, his crime spree came to and end, yet he was still alive but unconscious, and you decided to "finish the job" and shoot him some more, you'd be going to prison. The language is important. Even if in self defense situations, if you say that you were shooting to kill, you're going to be in serious trouble, but if you say you were shooting to stop, you're in the clear.
The Justice Department prosecutes all crimes prosecuted by the U.S. federal government regardless of which agency has jurisdiction over that kind of regulatory activity. The Canadian government could prosecute for passport fraud or forgery. The offshore account country could prosecute for bank fraud or forgery. The U.S. federal government, the Canadian government, and the offshore jurisdiction could probably all prosecute for attempted money laundering or attempted tax evasion (or worse, such as attempted material support of terrorism). Realistically, none of this is terribly likely to happen if there is no harm, and even if there was an arrest and a conviction, the sentence would probably be mild for such a victimless white collar crime (probably probation and a fine or a few months in jail at most unless there were larger aggravating factors). But, harm is not required for a criminal prosecution. Or, more precisely, the violation of the criminal law per se is the harm. 18 U.S.C. § 1543 states: Whoever falsely makes, forges, counterfeits, mutilates, or alters any passport or instrument purporting to be a passport, with intent that the same may be used; or Whoever willfully and knowingly uses, or attempts to use, or furnishes to another for use any such false, forged, counterfeited, mutilated, or altered passport or instrument purporting to be a passport, or any passport validly issued which has become void by the occurrence of any condition therein prescribed invalidating the same— Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 25 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate an act of international terrorism (as defined in section 2331 of this title)), 20 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 929(a) of this title)), 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime), or 15 years (in the case of any other offense), or both. This statute clearly applies to both U.S. and non-U.S. passports. But, it isn't obvious that the crime would apply in this case, because the crime may have taken place outside the U.S. and with a target outside the U.S., one or the other must be true for the U.S. to enforce its criminal laws - U.S. citizenship isn't sufficient. The offense in this particular statute is making with the intent that some use it, using or attempting to use a passport. The crime was directed at the offshore location. But, it wouldn't be such a stretch to assume that if the fake passport was made or used by the defendant in a U.S. living room that it was used there even if only to send it over the Internet to a foreign country. On the other hand, if the fake passport were made or used in a hotel room in Montreal by a U.S. citizen and was directed at the Cayman Islands, the U.S. might lack criminal jurisdiction over the case. The maximum offense would be 10 years and a fine for a first or second offense, but the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines would very likely call for a much milder recommended sentence, and any excess punishment over this recommendation would have to be justified by the judge.
Do criminals really &quot;have no recourse&quot; if their ill-gotten property is stolen by a third party? Basically yes. At sentencing, they can argue that restitution or fines should be limited because the money was in turn stolen from them and they don't have it. For example, I once had a client who was the sole heir to the estate of someone who had a substantial amount of illegal drugs in their possession at the time of the decedent's death (worth perhaps $100,000 USD), but the illegal drugs were stolen after the death of the decedent by someone known to my client. There was no legal way for my client to gain possession that stolen property or its worth.
Short Answer There were 30 House of Lords convictions of peers resulting in a punishment for the peer (in 29 cases a death sentence, and in the one final case, in 3 months of imprisonment) from 1499 until the practice was abolished in 1948, a time period covering all but the first 158 years of the 607 years during which House of Lords trials were available and the process was formalized. Of those convicted peers, 30% were pardoned or commuted by the monarch. There was no appeal from a House of Lords conviction other than a royal pardon or commutation. Modern criminal appeals did not exist in ordinary criminal cases either, in any part of the time period during which peers were convicted by the House of Lords of crimes for which we have good records (i.e. from 1499 to 1901). Ordinary criminal procedure compared This should also be viewed in the context of the history of ordinary criminal procedure in England (this link is the source applies to all of the discussion in this section). Prior to the year 1700, appeals consisted of a petition to the King or Queen resulting not in a pardon or commutation, but in a direction by the monarch for officials to determine if there were any serious errors in the process by issuing a discretionary writ of error, so it basically, another form of pardon type relief. The Writ of Error and some other procedural remedies short of an appeal existed from 1700 to 1907 in England but evolved over time. Initially, review other than discretionary review by the monarch was limited to a determination that the judge was really a judge in good standing with jurisdiction over the case, that the indictment described a crime, that a correct number of eligible jurors were seated and rendered a verdict, that the sentence was consistent with the sentence authorized by law. This kind of review of criminal convictions was similar to 18th and early 19th century habeas corpus review of convictions in the United States. Writs of error were also used discretionarily in the U.K. in this era in cases where the prosecution wanted to admit that it made a mistake and vacate a conviction. A detailed record of the proceeding that would make a more substantive review possible, however, was not available until 1886, and that was replaced, 21 years later, by the modern direct appeal of a criminal conviction based upon a trial court record include a transcript of the proceedings and all exhibits that had been admitted in the case. True formal direct appeals of criminal convictions in the modern sense, however, did not exist in England prior to 1907, after the last verdict of conviction was made by the House of Lords. So, there weren't true direct appeals in ordinary criminal cases either, in the time period when it would have been potentially relevant to appeals of House of Lords convictions. Of course, the monarch had the power to pardon or commute the sentences of people convicted of crimes in the U.K. in ordinary criminal cases, &quot;since times immemorial&quot;, just as in House of Lords cases. But, people with ordinary criminal convictions, unlike peers convicted in the House of Lords, did not have the right to demand an audience with the monarch in the way that a peer did, which made the process of seeking pardons and commutations much less effective for commoners. Long Answer The right to be tried by other peers was established around the time of the Magna Carta, formalized in 1341, and formally abolished in 1948. Prior to 1695 it was before only a jury of nobles hand picked by the monarch to rule as the monarch desired, when parliament was not in session, but after that the entire House of Lords participated in each trial. From 1547 to 1841, there was no punishment after a first offense other than treason or murder, which was just a strike to open up the possibility of punishment for a second offense, and greatly reduced the need for an appeal. According to Wikipedia (references omitted): The right of peers to trial by their own order was formalized during the 14th century. A statute passed in 1341 provided: Whereas before this time the peers of the land have been arrested and imprisoned, and their temporalities, lands, and tenements, goods and cattels, asseized in the King's hands, and some put to death without judgment of their peers: It is accorded and assented, that no peer of the land ... shall be brought in judgment to lose his temporalities, lands, tenements, goods and cattels, nor to be arrested, imprisoned, outlawed, exiled, nor forejudged, nor put to answer, nor be judged, but by award of the said peers in Parliament. The privilege of trial by peers was still ill-defined, and the statute did not cover peeresses. In 1442, after an ecclesiastical court (which included King Henry VI of England, Henry Beaufort and John Kemp) found Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, guilty of witchcraft and banished her to the Isle of Man, a statute was enacted granting peeresses the right of trial by peers. By the reign of Henry VII of England [reigned 1485-1509], there were two methods of trial by peers of the realm: trial in the House of Lords (or, in proper terms, by the High Court of Parliament) and trial in the Court of the Lord High Steward. The House of Lords tried the case if Parliament was in session; otherwise, trial was by the Lord High Steward's Court. In the Lord High Steward's Court, a group of Lords Triers, sitting under the chairmanship of the Lord High Steward, acted as judge and jury. By custom, the number of Triers was not fewer than 23, so that a majority was a minimum of 12, but in fact, the number ranged from 20 to 35. The power to choose which peers served as Triers lay with the Crown and was sometimes subject to abuse, as only those peers who agreed with the monarch's position would be summoned to the Court of the Lord High Steward, thereby favoring the desired verdict. This practice was ended by the Treason Act 1695, passed during the reign of King William III. The Act required that all peers be summoned as Triers. All subsequent trials were held before the full House of Lords. In the House of Lords, the Lord High Steward was the President or Chairman of the Court, and the entire House determined both questions of fact and questions of law as well as the verdict. By convention, Bishops and Archbishops did not vote on the verdict, though they were expected to attend during the course of the trial. They sat until the conclusion of the deliberations, and withdrew from the chamber just prior to the final vote. At the end of the trial, peers voted on the question before them by standing and declaring their verdict by saying &quot;guilty, upon my honour&quot; or &quot;not guilty, upon my honour&quot;, starting with the most junior baron and proceeding in order of precedence ending with the Lord High Steward. For a guilty verdict, a majority of twelve was necessary. The entire House also determined the punishment to be imposed, which had to accord with the law. For capital crimes the punishment was death; the last peer to be executed was Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, who was hanged for murder in 1760. From 1547, if a peer or peeress was convicted of a crime, except treason or murder, he or she could claim &quot;privilege of peerage&quot; to escape punishment if it was his or her first offence. In all, the privilege was exercised five times, until it was formally abolished in 1841 when James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, announced he would claim the privilege and avoid punishment if he was convicted of duelling. He was acquitted before the introduction of the bill. The last trial in the House of Lords was that of Edward Russell, 26th Baron de Clifford, in 1935 for manslaughter (he was acquitted); the following year the Lords passed a bill to abolish trial by peers but the Commons ignored it. The right to trial by peers was abolished when the Lords added an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act 1948, which the Commons accepted. Now peers are tried by juries composed of commoners, though peers were themselves excused from jury service until the House of Lords Act 1999 restricted this privilege to members of the House of Lords. The right to be excused was abolished on 5 April 2004 by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Peers were and still are, hypothetically, subject to impeachment. Impeachment was a procedure distinct from the aforementioned procedure of trial in the House of Lords, though the House of Lords is the court in both cases. Charges were brought by the House of Commons, not a grand jury. Additionally, while in normal cases the House of Lords tried peers only for felonies or treason, in impeachments the charges could include felonies, treason and misdemeanours. The case directly came before the House of Lords, rather than being referred to it by a writ of certiorari. The Lord High Steward presided only if a peer was charged with high treason; otherwise, the Lord Chancellor presided. Other procedures in trials of impeachment were similar, however, to trials before the House of Lords: at the conclusion of the trial, the spiritual peers withdrew, and the temporal Lords gave their votes on their honour. The last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, in 1806 for misappropriating public money (he was acquitted). Since then, impeachment has become an obsolete procedure in the United Kingdom. The ultimate appeal was to the King or Queen personally, and the right to personally petition the sovereign called &quot;access to the sovereign&quot; is one of the traditional privileges of peerage that U.K. nobles held: according to Sir William Blackstone in 1765, &quot;it is usually looked upon to be the right of each particular peer of the realm, to demand an audience of the King, and to lay before him, with decency and respect, such matters as he shall judge of importance to the public weal.&quot; The privilege of access is no longer exercised[.] In the time period from 1499 to 1901 there were 30 convictions of peers by the House of Lords that were not excused by peer privilege (there were no other convictions after 1901), all of which except a 3 month sentence in 1901, were death sentences. Seven of those convicted were pardoned by the monarch (most recently in 1746). Two peers had a death sentences commuted by the monarch to imprisonment in 1603. Two more escaped before being executed in 1716, and one died of other causes before he could be executed in 1589. Only three death sentences were carried out following House of Lords convictions since the last royal pardon in 1746. (There were five other House of Lords convictions for offenses other than murder or treason prior to 1841 and punishable by a sentence other than death, but in all five of those cases, the &quot;privilege of peerage&quot; was used to vacate any punishment for the crime of conviction because it was a first offense, so no appellate review or royal pardon or commutation was necessary.) Thus, 30% of peers convicted and sentenced to death by the House of Lords were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by the monarch. There was no forum outside of the House of Lords other than a royal pardon to which an appeal was available. Incidentally, 30 convictions of offenses limited to murder and treason in this time period isn't vanishingly low. Before the recent contraction of the House of Lords, it had about 730 peers at any one time, so in the 449 year period for which we have records, there were about 328,000 person years of potential defendants, with a conviction for murder or treason every 11,000 or so person years. This is quite high by modern standard for an exceedingly privileged and carefully socialized group of people who didn't have access to firearms for most of that time period.
Yes, because the crimes are different instances. Let's remove the guilty plea and the fact that it is murder: can a person assault a person, be tried and imprisoned, then assault the same person later – and get off by declaring "Double jeopardy!". No, it's not the same crime. It's the same type of crime, and involves the same victim, but it is still a different crime. The same with your proposed scenario. (Incidentally, your first line is wrong: the woman wasn't murdered, she was thought to have been murdered).