Terry Lenamon on the Death Penalty : Lawyer & Attorney Terry Lenamon on Capital Punishment Defense, Death Penalty Trials & Appeals | Law Firm

Sale of organs "illegal" in China after July 2006

In 2006, the government enacted the provisions on the "Entry and Exit of Cadavers," which officially banned the commercial sale of human organs. [136] However, the 2006 provisions failed to address the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, leaving the 1984 order intact.[137]

The drafter of the 2006 provisions stated, "The guideline will specifically not mention the use of executed prisoners' organs, even though it's the main source of organs in China . . . . The executed prisoners' organs will not be specifically banned in this guideline or in the coming Human Organ Transplant Rule."[138]

This new legislation became effective July 1, 2006, banning the sale of human organs, requiring donors to provide written permission for the transplantation of their organs, limiting transplant surgery to certain institutions, compelling an ethics committee to review and approve all transplants in advance, and requiring institutions performing transplant surgery to verify that the organs are from legal sources. [139] The provisions attempt to regulate the transportation of cadavers.[140]

However, the provisions still provide the Chinese government with the ultimate authority on all decisions related to export matters. [141] For example, Article 8 of the provisions states, "It is strictly prohibited to trade in cadavers, and to make use of cadavers to engage in commercial activities." [142] However, Article 7 states that if Chinese customs officials are presented with a valid certificate issued by the Chinese government to approve the transport of cadavers, the body is released.[143]

In China, enacting legislation does not mean enforcing it.[144]

In China today, the reality is that the abstract principle of law is often corrupted by the wish for personal gain or the interests of the Communist Party. [145] It has been reported that organs are still being sold following this 2006 legislation.[146]

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Justice Raoul Cantero III knows his stuff: he's served as a justice on the Florida Supreme Court. So does Mark Schlakman, who has been a senior program director at the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. When these two team up to write an opinion piece, you betcha I'm gonna read it -- and hopefully a lot of other people will, too.

Cantero and Schlakman are Blunt: the Current Florida Death Penalty System is "FRAUGHT WITH PROBLEMS"

Essentially, these two experts in the field have taken the American Bar Association report that analyzed the state of Florida's death penalty system as it stood three years ago, and they've compared it to the realities of the system today.  It wasn't a namby-pamby report:  the ABA put together a team of the highest quality experts in the field, and financed their TWO YEAR study of the Florida system.  Surely some of what they recommended (and their recommendations had to be unanimous to be included) would be respected and implemented, right?  Nope.

Florida fails in the comparison. 

According to their op-ed piece, Cantero and Schlakman discovered that neither the Florida Bar Association nor the State of Florida have done much of anything in response to the ABA's report.  Nada, really.  Meanwhile, since 1973, they note that Florida has exonerated more Death Row inmates than any other state.

 The op-ed itself is R. Cantero & M. Schlakman, "State's death penalty system still 'fraught with problems,'" Florida Times-Union, Sept. 25, 2009 (op-ed), 

Here are some highlights: 

"Among the report's findings was that legal representation of death penalty defendants in postconviction proceedings is often abysmal."

"...called upon the Legislature to revisit the death penalty statute."

"The report also expresses concern about socioeconomic and geographic bias. Prosecutors from one circuit might opt for the death penalty while prosecutors from another might opt for life without parole."

"Circuit judges, who preside over capital cases, while nonpartisan and subject to the judicial canons, are not completely immune from such dynamics, since they also face the voters periodically."

Please read this opinion piece and share it with others.  It's important. 

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