Why don't we have a law as tuff as this one?

[AlphaCentauri]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gm1FjOg4MF7kVcP2aA56x0pj73dgD8UKQ9VO0

Chinese Official Gets Life for Bribery
1 day ago

BEIJING (AP) — The former communist party boss of Olympic host city Qingdao was sentenced to life in prison for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, state media reported Wednesday.

Du Shicheng was found guilty of taking $870,000 worth of bribes from 2000 to January 2006 while serving as the port city's most powerful official, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Thriving Qingdao has spent enormous funds to relocate a former shipyard in order to host sailing events for the August Games, creating fertile opportunity for officials to collect bribes and kickbacks from developers.

The sentence was handed down at the Intermediate People's Court of Xiamen, in southeastern China's Fujian province on Tuesday, Xinhua said. Chinese officials are frequently tried in cities far from where they served to prevent political allies from influencing verdicts.

Corruption can be punished with the death penalty in China, but Xinhua said the judges showed leniency toward Du because he confessed to some crimes authorities had not previously known about.

The government has been making efforts to stop rampant graft — the cause of widespread public anger that has undermined the Communist Party's authority — and thousands of officials have been punished, some executed, in the last several years.

Hong Kong newspaper reports had implicated Du in a sex and corruption scandal that is believed to have triggered the downfall of Chen Tonghai, the former chairman of China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, China's No. 2 oil company.

Du and Chen, who was referred to prosecutors last month on charges of corruption and bribe-taking, reportedly shared the same mistress. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, was allegedly introduced to Chen by former Finance Minister Jin Renqing, who abruptly resigned last August for unspecified reasons.

[RB TexLa]

1. You really want people put to death for taking a bribe?

[AlphaCentauri]

2. well, how good is taking bribes?

[Rex]

3. I think you are stretching there, the OP didn't ask for anyones death.

The perp got life in prison.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

4. The Don Siegelman threads might interest you.

[MonkeyFunk]

5. Because it's excessive

and unconstitutional.

[AlphaCentauri]

15. specially for those in power n/t

[murielm99]

6. Because we are a democracy.

At this point we still are a democracy. A few laws like this, and four more years of republican rule will change all that.

[AlphaCentauri]

10. I don't think rep* will make laws to punish corruption. n/t

[rwenos]

7. It's not Proportional

There is an ethical principle that the price a criminal should pay must bear some relationship to the harm resulting from the crime. This is entirely consisten with the Old Testament "eye for an eye," but more broadly applicable. For example, cutting off a thief's hand is both barbaric AND inefficient -- thus failing both ethical and utilitarian analysis -- because not only is a person's hand worth more intrinsically than the apple (or whatever) stolen, but also because cutting off the hand condemns the person to a lifetime of extreme difficulty in supporting themself. Cutting off the hand is also unfixable -- while the victim of the theft can be "made whole" by restitution -- i.e., a payment of money.

[AlphaCentauri]

11. No it's not proportional especially when government officials are corrupt

they damage their whole country not just a person.

[tuckessee]

12. When people use the overwhelming, unavoidable force of gov't to commit their crimes....

...the punishment should be severe.

[AlphaCentauri]

14. absolutely, people in government should be punish in a different way

government crimes are not equal to civil crimes.

[DCKit]

8. The last two paragraphs seem to indicate that it wasn't the graft...

but the embarrassment - to the party - of his being exposed in sexcapades as well as his ties to other disgraced officials.

The Chinese are big on propriety and, with the Olympics coming up, the scandals over toys, drugs and pet food (and now dumplings exported to Japan and international news about their water shortage) are making the central government look incompetent and lax. They're putting their collective foot down and setting an example. "No more shenanigans until AFTER the Olympics."

Then again, maybe he just wasn't high enough within the party to get away with it.

[dysfunctional press]

9. politicians like to say that the death penalty works as a deterrent...

well, let's let them put their money where their mouth is, and test that theory on political corruption.

[AlphaCentauri]

13. couldn't say it better

I'm against the death penalty but I agree with your statement.