BEIJING — In 10 years on China's highest court, Xuan Dong had a hand in the executions of 1,000 people -- most carried out by a bullet to the back of the head, often within weeks of the verdict.
On his worst days, he considered himself a Communist Party hanging judge.
Sitting on the Supreme People's Court, he represented the last hope of the condemned. Secretly, he loathed rubber-stamping death sentences against people who he thought rarely deserved such a fate, often accepting confessions he knew were gained by torture. He watched silently as lawyers were beaten and dragged from court if they challenged the party's will.
In 2000, Xuan walked away from the bench to battle for human rights. Now, as China re-evaluates its hard-line policies on capital punishment, the 59-year-old defense lawyer has called for public trials, more media exposure and protections for lawyers, and less party interference with the judiciary.
"The party should not give instructions" to judges, he said. "There have been changes bit by bit, but they are too slow."
Recently, Chinese rights advocates such as Xuan have seen progress within a legal system that each year is estimated to execute more people than all other countries combined. Legislation enacted in 2006 requires the high court to review all death sentences, a step that had been dropped two decades ago.
Facing pressure before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China reportedly has scaled back the pace of executions. Although the government considers the number a state secret, China executed 1,051 people in 2006, accounting for two-thirds of the 1,591 put to death worldwide that year, according to statistics from Amnesty International, often based on media reports.
That represented a 40% drop from China's recorded total of 1,770 the previous year. Yet because of state secrecy, some activists believe that the number of executions could be as high as 10,000 to 15,000 a year.
The high court reviewed only a small portion of capital cases in recent years. Lower courts had operated virtually without oversight since Deng Xiaoping gave them the power to impose capital punishment amid a crime wave in the 1980s. Acquittals are rare and appeals are made in the same court, heard by poorly trained provincial judges little inclined to contradict themselves, according to studies by criminal justice experts.
Flawed system
