TENG XINGSHAN protested his innocence all the way to the execution ground. But it was only this year, 16 years after his execution by gunshot, that the butcher was found to be not guilty of the murder of a waitress. She was alive and in jail.

Such miscarriages of justice may become a little less common in China after the Supreme Court decided this week to reclaim the power to review all death sentences. The aim of the decision to strip provincial courts of the right to impose the death penalty is to try to reduce the number of people who suffer Mr Teng’s fate.

Capital punishment must be meted out meticulously and fairly, Chief Justice Xiao Yang, the president of the Supreme People’s Court, said. “The death sentence is the most serious level of penalty for criminals. It is reserved for felons guilty of the most atrocious crimes,” he said.

China executes more people each year than all other countries combined. The actual figure is a state secret, but Amnesty International estimates that at least 3,400 executions were carried out last year and as many as 6,000 people were sentenced to death. The total could be as high as 10,000, according to some estimates.

Mark Allison, of the Hong Kong office of Amnesty International, which campaigns for the end to the death penalty, said: “This is a positive step, but it is difficult to judge how many fewer sentences will be carried out, and our call is for complete transparency.”

Amnesty is calling for a moratorium on executions in China. With the Supreme Court recovering the power to review such sentences, the number of executions could drop by a third, Chinese officials said.

The Supreme Court said that since 2003 it had rejected 7.21 per cent of death sentences, ordering retrials for lack of evidence. It also said that it changed 22.03 per cent of the death verdicts to life imprisonment. Several wrongful death sentences exposed this year prompted the review of the system. Mr Xiao said: “As few executions as possible should be carried out, and as cautiously as possible, in order to avoid wrongful executions.”

China was outraged this year by the news of the butcher’s wrongful execution. Another case that provoked an outcry was the conviction of She Xianglin, whose wife disappeared in 1994. Three months later her mother identified the body of a woman found in a nearby pond as that of her daughter.

Mr She was arrested and swiftly sentenced to death. A higher court in Hubei province sent back the case for lack of evidence, demanding a retrial.

Mr She spent the next 11 years in prison. But last March Mrs She reappeared in the village, remarried and with a son.

Her wrongly jailed first husband, now 39, was released and received £32,000 compensation. He said that he had been tortured into confessing to the murder.

At present 68 crimes carry the death penalty in China, ranging from killing a panda to tax fraud, smuggling, corruption, crimes against national security, murder and rape.

Since 1996 more executions have been carried out by lethal injection, although a bullet to the back of the head or to the heart remains the most common method. In the past the family was often required to pay for the bullet.

Other reforms have been implemented in recent years. For decades, it was common to parade prisoners, posters with their name hanging around their neck, through the town in an open lorry en route to the execution ground, where the prisoners were killed in public.

The Government put an end to that practice in 1998. Some reports say that condemned prisoners are now granted a meal of their own choice on the night before their execution, as well as an unlimited supply of cigarettes. No alcohol is allowed, however.

INFAMOUS FIVE

Countries with highest execution rate, 2004

China at least 3,400

Iran at least 159

Vietnam at least 64

USA at least 59

Saudi Arabia at least 33

Amnesty International

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