Death Penalty to Drug-Related Crimes:

A Vietnam Perspective

Dr. Hai Thanh Luong

Lecturer
(Centre for Criminology Research and Criminal Investigation, PPA)
Honorary Principal Research Fellow
(School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies, RMIT University)
 Death Penalty and Drug Offenders

• ‘ignoring warnings about the mandatory death penalty, traffickers continue to

smuggle drugs across borders in a continuous game of cat-and-mouse with
law enforcement’. (quoted by Mahathir in Rahman&Crofts 2013, p.vii)

• To some extent, partly, it is explain that why thirty-three out of fifty-eight

nations or territories in the world, in 2015, that have to continue to stipulate
the capital punishment for drug offences (Gallahue and Lines, 2015).

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 Presentation’s Milestones

1. Death Penalty in Vietnam: Law and Practice

2. Principles of Vietnam to apply death penalty into drug-related crimes
3. In the next steps (?)

RMIT University©March 2011 International & Development Portfolio 3

The Criminal Code of Vietnam Stipulates the Death Penalty

(from past to current)

Time 1985 1989-1991-1992-1997 1999 2009 2015

Articles 29 44 29 22 18
(with Death
Penalty)

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Cautions:

Decision No.01/2004/QD-TTg of Prime Minister on 5th January 2004 issued to

State Secret Classification of the People’s Court Profile. Accordingly, all of
Court’s documents, records, reports, and statistics regard to death penalty are
belong to ‘highly official secret level’ of the People’s Court field

All of my statistics and data were referred and cited from multi-sources. Please
make sure that it only supports on scientific researches, not any political and
religion attitudes.

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 Statistical Data Death Penalty in Vietnam
from 1993 to 2016

Times 1993-2001 2001-2010 2011-2016 Total

Death Penalty 1179 1421 429 3029

Note: Excluding the data of 2003-2004 and 2011-2012

Source: Be combined between journal article (Toan, Quoc Trinh 2012, The Death
Penalty in Criminal Law of Vietnam - Proposed Issues to Improve, Journal on
Democracy and Law, 4(241), pp.22-29) and authorised statistics

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Source: Rapin, A.-J. (2003). Ethnic Minorities, Drug Use and Harm in the
Highlands of Northern Vietnam: A Contextual Analysis of the Situation in Six
Communes from Son La, Lai Chau, and Lao Cai. Hanoi, Vietnam: Thegioi
Publishing, p.81

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Note: - Total number of the period 2001-2010: 1421 death penalty
- Excluding the data of 2003 and 2004

Source: Toan, Quoc Trinh 2012, The Death Penalty in Criminal Law of Vietnam -
Proposed Issues to Improve, Journal on Democracy and Law, 4(241), pp.22-29

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 Principles to Apply the Death Penalty to
Drug-Related Crimes under Vietnam’s Perspectives

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 Rule of Law

• Based on and International laws and its relation within Vietnam context

– International laws regard to human rights and its ‘flexibilities’ to stipulate

the death penalty with ‘particularly serious crimes’

– Vietnam’s perspectives in law, policy, and practice

‘…Reducing prison sentences; increasing the application of financial penalties and
non-custodial re-education measures for some crimes. Reducing the number of
death sentences so as only to apply to some extremely dangerous crimes…’
(Resolution No.49/NQ-BCT of the Politburo of the Communist Party

of Vietnam on the Judicial Reform Strategy to 2020, issued on 2 June 2005)

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 Rule of Law

• Based on and International laws and its relation within Vietnam context

• Vietnam’s legislative regulations and its application in practices

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 Vietnam’s legislative regulations

• The purpose of sentences:

– Penalties aim not only to punish offenders but also to rehabilitate them
into persons useful to society and having the sense of observing laws and
regulations of the socialist life, preventing them to commit other crimes.

– Penalties also aim to educate other people to respect laws

– Prevent and combat crimes

(The 2015 Criminal Code of Vietnam, Article 31)

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 The Proportionality Principle

• In Vietnam, the humanity principle requires that the courts use the least
intrusive and least severe sanction if possible, given the circumstances of the
offence and the offender due to the final intended aims of the sentencing
system is to educate and help the convicted rehabilitated

• The death penalty is only used in sentencing where drug-related offenses

satisfy two main conditions.
– Firstly, it is those who they committed a particularly serious crimes for illegal manufacturing of
narcotics substances (Para 4, Article 248, the 2015 CCV), for illegal transport of narcotics
substances (Para 4, Article 250, the 2015 CCV) and for illegal trading of narcotics substances
(Para 4, Article 251, the 2015 CCV)

– Secondly, when investigation, prosecution, and trial, if the judicial bodies have enough legal
testimonies to prove that applying penalties such as termed imprisonment and life
imprisonment cannot guarantee to educate and rehabilitate them into persons helpful to
society, they must be charged with the death penalty
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 Classifying Penalties to Drug-Related Crimes

• A 20-year jail term for defendants guilty of trafficking from 100g to 300g of
heroin

• Life imprisonment for trafficking from 300g to 600g,

• Capital punishment for 600g and upwards

(Resolution No.01/2001/NQ-HDTP of the People’s Supreme Court on 15th March 2001

issued guidelines main stipulations in the 1999 Criminal Code of Vietnam)

• Practical changes to calculate narcotics substances: from quantity to quality

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 The Fairness Principles

• Not distinguish any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political
or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status of the
convicted

– To severely penalize conspirators, ringleaders, commanders, dangerous recidivists,

those who have abused their positions and powers to commit crimes and those who
have committed crimes with treacherous operations (how about with drug
mules/couriers?)

– To grant leniency to persons who make confessions, make honest declarations,

denounce accomplices, redeem their faults with achievements, show repentance,
voluntarily right themselves to assist the law enforcement agencies to continuous
investigation and prosecution the rest of their cases and complicities

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 Future of the Death Penalty in Asia…

‘…The biggest issues have to do with when rather than whether capital
punishment will cease [due to] it is not an issue like air or water pollution in
which compliance with international norms carries significant costs for the
domestic economy. The pace toward ending the death penalty is slow more
because the incentives to cease execution are weak than because the costs of
abolition are high. [Thus,] Asia is the next important frontier for policy debate
and legal change with respect to capital punishment…(pp.xiii, 3, added
emphasizes).

Johnson, D. T., & Zimring, F. E. (2009). The Next Frontier: National Development,
Policy Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia. Oxford, the U.K.: Oxford Univesrity
Press.

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 What we should do?

• In Southeast Asian regions: moving forward on 2020 – “Drug Free Zone”

– To review the law, policy and practice via State-by-State

– To compare between abolitionist and retentionists

– To debate on abolition or retention or de fact (thinks about European

Community with Death Penalty Free Zone?)

• In Vietnam:

– To research with overall provisions on death penalty via article by article

– To organize public opinion about their attitude on death penalty

– To suggest to reduce capital punishments with articles as much as

possible (for example, crime-related economics)

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The Death Penalty for Drug-Related Crimes in Vietnam…

…would be abolished it sometime in the future

‘when the time is right’

Hood R. (2009). Abolition of the Death Penalty: China in World

Perspective. City University of Hong Kong Law Review, 1, 1-21

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… not now with drug-related crimes (I think so)

Thank you very much for your attention

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