According to the Ministry of Public Security, the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Penal Code abolishes the death penalty for 8 crimes out of a total of 18 crimes with the death penalty of the 2015 Penal Code (amended and supplemented in 2017), including:
Crime of activities to overthrow the people's government; Spy crimes; Crime of destroying facilities - techniques of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; Crime of production and trading of fake goods is a medicine and preventive medicine; Illegal transportation of narcotics; Crime of property embezzlement; Guilty of accepting bribes; Crime of destroying peace, causing war invasion.
The draft law also clearly states the addition of life imprisonment without reduction in sentences for crimes of abolishing the death penalty; adding a provision not to execute the death penalty in cases where a person sentenced to death has a serious illness such as: terminal cancer, HIV infection has passed to the stage of AIDS with chance infections, bad prognosis.
The Ministry of Public Security said that, based on the general proposal to amend and supplement the above contents, including: Institutionalizing the Party's viewpoints and policies on reducing the death penalty; Meeting the requirements of international integration in the criminal justice sector;
Contributing to overcoming and limiting shortcomings in the regulation on applying the death penalty according to the provisions of the current Penal Code; Implementing the humanitarian principles of criminal law while still ensuring the necessary deterrence and strictness.
In addition, the Ministry also mentioned positive factors when abolishing the death penalty for the above 8 crimes. For the crimes of embezzlement of property and bribery, the Ministry of Public Security has clarified the specific reasons for proposing to abolish the death penalty.
Firstly, practice shows that most countries in the world have not yet regulated the death penalty or are tending to abolish the death penalty;
Second, in practice, many countries in the world have required Vietnam to commit not to apply the death penalty or sentence but not to execute the death penalty for corruption and position-related cases, but Vietnam has not committed, so when Vietnam requests mutual legal assistance related to the death penalty, there is almost no response.
Third, the crimes of embezzlement and bribery are economic crimes, positions with the main purpose of profit, so for these crimes, in addition to punishment, the important purpose of the state is to recover and overcome lost and misappropriated assets.
