ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the history of mercy law and practice in contemporary China, and examines plausible reasons for the complete absence of executive clemency in People’s Republic of China-era capital cases. The absence of legal provisions regarding executive clemency is the critical reason why the effort to save Jia Jinglong failed. Jia Jinglong’s execution merely forms the tip of a proverbial iceberg of cases for which executive clemency has been requested in recent years, all of which ended in execution. Legally speaking, China used executive clemency only for non-capital cases during the first eight special amnesties, yet Chinese political leaders undoubtedly exercised a parallel form of mercy in capital cases, sparing war criminals’ lives through extra-legal political instructions. Historically, executive clemency was used in China as far back as the Western Zhou Dynasty, founded in 1046 BC, through to the Qing Dynasty, ending in AD 1911.
