A Study on the Non-Statutory Factors in Death Penalty Trials in China

Limited by the legal and social structure of a death penalty case, the co-existence of two models of judgments (sociological model and jurisprudential model) is inevitable during the trial. Non-statutory factors, as sources of law, reflect both the value judgment of a case's social structure and the logical inference of a case's legal structure in death penalty trials. Because of that, non-statutory factors should be brought into criminal adjudication norms. However, based on the spirit of rule of law, in modern criminal trials the non-statutory factors should not be considered as an independent criminal adjudication norm but only attachments to statutory law. This is the only proper way to embody the virtues contributed by them during the trials. Meanwhile, there should be some institutional regulations when bringing non-statutory factors into criminal adjudication norms, so that on one hand we could strengthen the judicial control on death penalty cases, and on the other hand we could make death penalty trials more rational in judgment, more standard in procedure, and safer for our society.