Modernization in China rolls on with eighteen mobile execution vans on the prowl to fulfill the edicts of the Intermediate Courts of the southern province of Yunnan as well as the cities of Harbin and Shanghai. As reported by Australian Hamish McDonald in The Age, the previous traditional Chinese method of execution was for the condemned criminal to be taken by open truck to the execution ground, often a soccer stadium, and made to kneel with hands cuffed and head bowed before being shot in the head. Families who want to reclaim the body were charged for the bullet. A Chinese law passed in 1995 made lethal injection an alternative to the bullet, and Yunnan officials say most prisoners and their families prefer the injection. The new $60,000 execution “death on wheels” vans are converted 24-seater buses. The vehicles look like ordinary police vans except they are marked with the Chinese word “court”. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. A police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe plunges a lethal drug into the prisoner’s vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver’s seat and be recorded if required. China’s legal system executes an estimated 15,000 people per year and allows only one appeal. When appeals against the death penalty are rejected, the sentence is carried out immediately, sometimes within hours. “When they know they can’t be pardoned, they accept this method calmly, and have less fear,” one official told the Chinese Life Weekly.
Efficiency and cost were foremost on the minds of Yunnan officials, according to the paper. “With lethal injection, only four people are required to execute the death penalty: one executioner, one member of the court, one from the procuratorate and one forensic doctor. A dozen guards are also required to keep watch around the van,” the paper said. “In contrast, many more guards are needed for firing squads, both around the site and along the route from the prison. If the case is well-known and complicated, security needs to be further enhanced and extra expenses are incurred.”
This latest advancement in Chinese justice comes amid continuing international rumors of their using condemned prisoners as sources for transplantable organs. At least the Chinese have skipped the American stages of judicial execution between bullets and lethal injection, namely hanging and the electric chair, aka “Old Sparky”. The new Chinese practice of mobile executions isn’t really original, either; the French took their guillotine and mounted it on carts to support their national mass execution of dissidents ordered by the Committee of Public Safety and known as The Terror, which is a prime historical example of how bad things can get when a ruling government adopts a “for us or against us” philosophy. Even under such circumstances there is room for scientific courage. A story is told (perhaps an urban legend?) that the French chemist and discoverer of oxygen Antoine Lavoisier asked a friend to record how many times he blinked after his own head was severed…a scientist to the last.